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Article published on Logistica Efficiente on February 15th, 2022. For Bellsolà, the Azzano San Paolo company developed and installed an automatic warehouse for the storage of frozen pastry and baked goods. Automha, a leading manufacturer in the automated warehouse sector, has been present in the Spanish territory since 2015 with a branch in Barcelona. The Bergamo company decided to solidify its presence by collaborating with Bellsolà, a Spanish company that produces frozen pastry and baked goods products, founded in 1890 in the province of Girona. Over time, Bellsolà was the protagonist of constant growth in its sector, becoming one of the most important brands in the “panadería de congelados española” thanks to investments in new production lines and innovative technological processes.

The variety of products and increase in sales volume in the national and international market brought the Spanish company to turn to Automha, with the goal of developing their own logistics-distribution system previously based on a shift to the service sector. Bellsolà decided to autonomously manage finished products that, on the contrary, were entrusted to third parties. The problems discovered regarded shipping control when it came to the truck loading time, considered too long, and the management of returns, caused by the distance between the manually operated refrigerated rooms. Bellsolà’s need was to eliminate third-party warehouses and concentrate products in a single warehouse next to the production center and attached to the other structures to guarantee an elevated storage capacity and offer better service to the client. Automha, thanks to its experience in the sector and direct support within the territory on behalf of its own Spanish commercial office, proposed the solution to construct a warehouse equipped with multi-level automatic satellites, able to guarantee elevated performances, speed, and optimal stock management. The satellites installed by Automha can work autonomously and independently on each storage level, making the plant flexible and reducing the amount of maintenance and risk of malfunction, also resolving this need of Bellsolà. Another advantage of the plant regards the energy efficiency connected to the satellites’ consumption, an element to not underestimate in environments of elevated energy consumption like the refrigerated rooms.

The warehouse is composed of 18 Autosatmovers (automatic systems for the storage automation of pallets on which goods are placed), 6 lifters, a roboticized palletization island, an AGV (Automated Guided Vehicle) that enables the movement to the workplace without the physical support of an operator thanks to the use of software, a TWL monorail circuit and a conveyor system of 4 voice picking stations able to recognize the human voice to supply and receive information, and 4 outbound bays for loading goods. This new system is automatically managed by the WMS (Warehouse Management System), software that supports the flow control of products entering, being loaded, or shipping out. The introduction of Automha systems enabled a speed increase in management, truck loading, overall processing times that became much more efficient. Currently, Bellsolà manages a quadrupled load in respect to what it was previously, which has made the company much more competitive, offering a new prospect for growth in the next years.