Vanderlande’s ADAPTO 3D shuttle concept received VDI’s Logistics Innovation Prize 2016 award

Photo by Vanderlande Industries GmbH

VDI has awarded the 2016 Logistics Innovation Prize to Vanderlande at the 25th annual German Material Flow Congress, which took place on 17-18 March at Garching, near Munich. The judges found a worthy winner in Vanderlande’s ADAPTO 3D shuttle concept.

The need for today’s business processes to handle globalisation, e-commerce and dealer-friendly delivery has had a major impact on supply chains and distribution centres. Increasing labour costs, limited space and many small orders with short delivery times are just a few of the many challenges that warehouses and distribution centres face these days. This means a continuous search for solutions to bring down operating costs, increase productivity, optimise the utilisation of space and to offer a better service.

This has led to the development of ADAPTO within Vanderlande’s total solutions portfolio. ADAPTO represents the next logical step in the development of flexible warehouse optimisation. The highly flexible three-dimensional storage, retrieval and transportation concept offers significant advantages over other shuttle systems.

The modular concept means that the shuttle system can be adapted to suit changing business demands. Warehouse capacity and throughput can be scaled independent of each other. ADAPTO only requires a small initial investment, and can be expanded in phases as and when called for by a company’s future strategic growth. This approach eliminates the risk of over- or under-dimensioning a system.

In addition, it makes optimal use of available space within a warehouse and can be easily upgraded to match changing business needs. It has also been designed to ensure warehouse and distribution centre operations can meet the market demand for shorter lead times and different-sized orders.

ADAPTO also delivers high levels of availability, because it is possible to continuously retrieve products from any part of the system. Maintenance activities can also be carried out while it is in operation.

The Logistics Innovation Prize is awarded each year by VDI-Gesellschaft Produktion und Logistik (VDI-GPL) to the company that has performed to the most outstanding level of achievement in this area. The independent panel of judges is made up of competent and acknowledged experts. The prize, a sculpture by well-known artist Maximillian Verhas, was donated by Unternehmensberatung B416.

For more information, please visit http://www.vanderlande.com.

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