Simon Hegele started out with a small family removal firm in Karlsruhe in 1920. He’s certainly come a long way since then. Today, the company that started life with just one cart and two cart-horses, has over 250 transport vehicles in its fleet.
In the 1960s, the company expanded dramatically. The removals and the transport of furniture were gradually supplemented with various hi-tech haulage assignments. Several takeovers and joint ventures followed in the period from 1990-2010 and Simon Hegele gained all the requisite ISO certificaties. So the company sets great store by quality.
Simon Hegele Logistics & Service currently has 24 subsidiaries in Germany and 4 others in the UK, Australia, the United States and Turkey. The company’s corebusiness is based on two main pillars: firstly, Hi-tech Transport & Installation and, secondly, Logistics & Supply Chain Management.
Simon Hegele hired stow to install a storage system with conventional pallet racking at its warehouses in Raunheim. This took place in October 2011. The project comprises two units where, in the main, medical components and technical devices for the telco sector are stored. In unit 1 a wide-aisle system with a capacity of ca. 4,300 pallet spaces was installed, while unit 2 got a wide-aisle system with ca. 2.700 pallet spaces and a narrow-aisle system with ca. 9,000 spaces. This brings the total number of pallet spaces to ca.16,000.
For the moment, orders are still picked manually using handheld scanners while, for all storage, clearance-from-bond and transshipment movements, use is made of turret trucks (for very narrow aisles). Mr. Henn, of the Consulting, Project & Change Management Department, stresses that flexibility is paramount to Simon Hegele. And that is ensured by this well-conceived system, that is easy to adapt for other applications, according to the customer’s particular needs.
A second big advantage is the density. The pallet racking that stow installed in these two units, allows of very compact storage of a large number of pallets. Mobile racking was ruled out in this case, said the customer, because all stock items had to be accessible at all times. So the preferred solution meets the requirements on that count too.
What made Simon Hegele choose stow? The company compared several product providers and soon came to the conclusion that stow had the most professional solution on offer. The customer also explained that relations with the representatives of stow had been first-class. In Simon Hegele’s eyes, things like consultation, flexibility, experience and good service clinched it.