SANHA GmbH & Co. KG, is one of the leading European manufacturers of piping systems for the gas, solar, heating and cooling sectors. The company’s range of around 8,300 products are used throughout Europe, Russia, Asia and Australia in domestic and industrial buildings as well as in applications including shipbuilding.
At the company HQ in Essen, Germany, a Combilift Combi-WR4 multidirectional pedestrian reach stacker is now used in the warehouse to ensure more efficient and faster handling of packs of 6m long tubes and pipes. The previous combination of a reach truck and manual labour was considered to be less than ideal and this manoeuvrable pedestrian option was chosen following a re-evaluation of internal transport and storage procedures.
The reach truck was able to offload deliveries, but once inside the warehouse, it could not easily move the long loads around the confined areas between racking, resulting in a makeshift procedure involving manual labour and trolleys. The WR4 has greatly improved operations thanks to its ability to access the whole of the storage area and relieve the workforce of any manual strain.
One notable benefit has been a threefold time-saving: it now takes just five minutes instead of fifteen to unload a pack and deposit it in the racking and when a product is scheduled for delivery the reverse procedure is just as fast. The 1,450kg capacity of the WR4 is a perfect match for the various individual loads, totalling around 1,000kg, that go in and out on a daily basis and according to the operators it’s a breeze to use. A rubber coating applied to the forks eliminates the risk of damage to the more fragile products. Due to the relatively low ceiling height of 3m, the machine was fitted with a special mast with a lift cut-off at 2.90m.
