Medicines at the Highest Level

Dr. Willmar Schwabe

The Karlsruhe-based company Dr. Willmar Schwabe has been committed to providing first-class pharmaceuticals for over 150 years. The GEBHARDT Intralogistics Group and the SAP-Projekthaus IGZ »Die SAP Ingenieure« have taken finished goods logistics to a whole new level and are now prepared for the future. The Schwabe Group is a group of pharmaceutical and healthcare companies that focuses on the plant as the base for their remedies. The group employs more than 4,000 people worldwide, generating sales of around 900 million euros.

GEBHARDT Reference Dr. Schwabe

A Holistic Solution Across Different Storage Areas

The High-Bay Warehouse

The pallet high-bay warehouse has two aisles with twelve levels per aisle. It has 2,760 storage spaces which are stored and retrieved by automated pallet conveyor technology and storage and retrieval machines (SRM). Each SRM can realise a total of 57 storage and retrieval operations per hour. In order to meet the quality requirements of the stored substances and goods (e.g. substances sensitive to water), the implementation had to be ATEXcompliant. The items from the high-bay warehouse are still served manually via pallet conveyor technology on the ground floor.

The Automatic Small Parts Warehouse

The pre-zone of the MLS warehouse forms a four-story platform, which is directly connected to the logistics building and integrates a continuous lifter for cartons over three floors. Ten console lifters supply the 20 MLS on four levels and serve the adjacent logistics building via three loop levels. Eight picking and packaging workstations, which are divided over three of the four building floors, offer a capacity of 200 picks per hour per space.

The Picking and Shipping Process

picking takes place on the third and fourth floors. While three high-performance SAP EWM-controlled multi-order picking workstations and one picking and packing workstation are set up on the third floor, the fourth floor has four additional multi-order workstations. The dynamics of the perfectly coordinated lifters and MLS allow optimal order picking. GEBHARDT Case Study | Dr. Willmar Schwabe – Medicines at the Highest Level 4 | 6 The tray conveyor system serves the goods directly to the workstations where they are packed into appropriate boxes. Up to five orders can be processed simultaneously, and a pick-to-light system displays the correct shipping box.





„Coordinating the technology in such a way that the two fit together perfectly was a challenge; another, the absolutely essential close coordination with those responsible for construction, as many MEP systems came close to the GEBHARDT delivery scope.“

Thomas Engelhardt, Project manager at GEBHARDT

GEBHARDT Centralises the Existing Logistics Areas at Dr. Willmar Schwabe

Dr. Willmar Schwabe is considered a world leader in research, development and production of herbal medicines. In order to continue to be dynamically and flexibly equipped for the future, GEBHARDT was commissioned as the general contractor for the logistics, materials handling technology and IT infrastructure.

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