Enoitalia is the first private winery in Italy by number of bottles produced and has been one of the top ten companies in the sector by turnover for years. A company that operates in 5 continents and over 80 countries all over the world, and in 2020 it produced 111 million bottles, of which 80% exported.
The production activity takes place mainly in its two wineries between Verona and Vicenza, where about 160 employees work. Both production plants are equipped with state-of-the-art winemaking, bottling and storage systems, emerging in the sector for efficiency, flexibility and innovation. This makes Enoitalia one of the market leaders in the winery sector, a company that has always invested in quality choosing the best technologies to improve its production capacity and distribution capillarity, and it decided to contact OCME to further optimize logistics and material flows in its production space.
After a preliminary analysis and the assessment of the customer’s needs and targets, OCME supplied Enoitalia with 11 automatic Laser Guided Vehicles (LGV) of the Auriga series, which includes two models.
Auriga PS Power Stacker is ideal for working in confined spaces, it moves easily between production lines thanks to its small size. The position of the wheels in relation to the transported load allows you to move up to 1500 kg.
Auriga CT Counterbalanced Truck is the counterbalanced forklift capable of managing up to three load pallets with maximum safety and flexibility, always thanks to its small size.
OCME also took care of the risk assessment, thanks to the support of qualified personnel. When we talk about the safety of an LGV system, we refer not only to the vehicles, but also to the system where they are installed. To this extent, in order to increase the level of safety and minimize residual risks during the development phase of the project, OCME carried out, in agreement with the customer, a detailed analysis to prevent as much as possible the occurrence of dangerous situations.
The vehicles move autonomously in the wide industrial layout following planned routes and carrying out pre-established tasks, thanks to the digitally connected WMS system that allows the operator to monitor and direct the machines remotely, even with their mobile phone.
First of all, the vehicles take the pallets containing empty bottles that are unloaded from the trucks and transport them from the entrance to the warehouse. A barcode showing the product type and its destination is scanned before the picking. Thanks to the WMS integration, which allows you to map the entire action area by dividing the space from the highest level of the plant to the lowest level, LGVs identify the exact locations to which the empty bottles are transported.
The vehicles are activated in a completely automatic way and on the basis of warehouse logics designed to optimize space and timing. All this always thanks to the interconnection between the production lines and the intelligent WMS system that connects LGV vehicles.
Furthermore, thanks to the installation of emission-free, long-lasting lithium batteries that can be recharged quickly, the Auriga series LGVs fully meet the needs of sustainability and consumption reduction.
Once the bottling process is completed, a signal confirming a new movement is sent back to the LGV. At this point, the pallets are stacked in an offset pyramid, with a maximum of three at a time, in order to guarantee the stabilization of the load without using the rack.
OCME's WMS system is directly connected to Enoitalia's ERP: this allows a great organization of shipments, coordinating the entire supply chain in relation to order fulfillment. The flow of materials is therefore always updated to the state of the art, to guarantee an efficient and punctual service 24h a day. During the night shift, in fact, 10 complete cargo bays are always prepared in advance.
A bar code reading and transport system is also installed for the return of pallets from other production sites, in order to redirect them and to trace the history of the goods.
The implementation of the Auriga LGV logistics solutions was the result of a strong cooperation between OCME and Enoitalia, who made the mutual know-how and advanced skills of each one available to the project, in order to achieve the set targets.
