Delivery specialist Hermes has invested 14m euros in a sixth transhipment centre for its German logistics network to include a sixth transhipment centre.
The site at Ohrdruf in the centre of the country and is used to tranship bulky items such as furniture and carpets for parent company Otto and other customers.
The logistics centre and the hub comprise a total area of 238,000 sq m. The site has been fitted out with a Vanderlande sorting system.
Currently, there are two shoe sorters operated in a recirculation system reliably process the 5,500 large parcels per hour at a speed of 2.2 m/s.
The hub can sort large parcels at the rate of 5,500 per hour or one every two thirds of a second.
A pallet conveyor system was also installed for marshalling shipments of goods at the relevant loading positions.
The entire sorting facility is a circulation system in which two Posisorters are connected in series, and it is installed on a platform with adjustable height levels.
A merge conveyor on which the large parcels unloaded from pallets are merged is located between the two Posisorters. A further merge conveyor is installed in the return flow on the opposite side. It is used to merge eight incoming goods lines coming from the doors. Depending on the length of the parcel, adequate space is reserved for the consignment on the take-away conveyor.
The Posisorter distributes the cartons with the aid of the divert shoes which can glide to the right and left over the sorter. At the discharge points, switch points are activated and a group of sorting shoes push the products smoothly to the relevant exit.
There are 70 outputs, 52 of which consist of a straight roller and a connected telescopic conveyor which can be used to load the truck or swap body directly.
On the opposite side there are two groups, each consisting of nine spiral chutes. The products routed to this point are loaded into roll cages or onto pallets and then brought to despatch.
Thought has also been given to expanding the system in the future. This could involve separating the two Posisorters so that each will have its own circulation system. This would mean that the incoming goods lines and the pallet unloading stations would be fitted with vertical conveyors to decide which of the two circulation systems the particular parcel should be brought to. With this variant, it would be possible to realise an output of 8,400 parcels per hour. This is equivalent to a time of around 0.43 seconds per parcel.
