Vehicle manufacturer PSA Peugeot Citroën is benefiting from improved availability and cost savings having been supplied with a new fleet of Linde trucks by Linde Creighton in West Bromwich, as part of a £4M contract. The development follows a reassessment by PSA Peugeot Citroën of its materials handling needs and has spent more than six months assessing suppliers.
The company had wanted a reliable source to provide more than 120 trucks for its Ryton manufacturing plant and 160-plus for the parts centre at Tile Hill, as well as a full service contract for both locations and a guarantee of 100% uptime for all the machines. With the Ryton plant operating three shift patterns covering a seven-day working week, it was imperative that PSA Peugeot Citroën selected a supplier which could provide support that mirrored those shifts.
The Linde fleet currently includes E16 P, E25, E35 1.6, 2.5 and 3.5 tonne electric counterbalance trucks and R16 1.6 tonne AC-powered reach trucks. More specialised trucks include the E10 1.0 compact electric counterbalance models and the L14 AP AS 1.4 tonne straddle stacker with folding operator platform.
More than 75% of the materials handling equipment at the Ryton plant are electric counterbalance units and are used in a variety of applications including loading/unloading, line feed and medium level stacking/destacking. The receiving areas handle a variety of stillages, including those containing bumpers and seats for the Peugeot 206.
The E16 Ps that transport the loaded seat stillages to the assembly lines and return the empty containers to the receiving area feature hydraulically-operated extending forks to give increased throughput.
The Tile Hill parts centre stocks more than 80,000 different items which are housed in two warehouses and served by a variety of Linde trucks including reach models and electric counterbalance units. A number of V11 1.1 tonne medium to high lift order pickers will complete the fleet there.
