Ford Motor Company’s Valencia Body & Assembly Plant, located in Almussafes, Spain, employs more than 8,000 workers, in the production and assembly of Ford vehicles , such as the Kuga SUV, Mondeo wagon, SMax, Galaxy and Transit Connect Vans. The plant, inaugurated in 1973, has grown considerably thanks to Ford’s investments, in particular the 2011 $ 2.6 billion investment, thus continuing to increase vehicle production.
With this constant growth of the Ford Valencia plant, the production lines are running 24/7 to meet the many demands. Ford, before Modula, had space management problems which led to long procurement times. In addition, disruptions on production lines caused blockages in the manufacturing process. These delays greatly affected the number of vehicles produced per day.
Modula’s automatic vertical warehouses as a buffer for production lines
Ford wanted to make the components needed for manufacturing available quickly, to meet production needs and at the same time store them efficiently, allowing operators to quick picking.
For this reason, Modula stores are used as buffers in lines of production acting as intermediate storage for production needs. In this way, whenever the production line stops due to an unexpected event, the stocked components are used in the period necessary for its recovery temporarily in the Modula warehouses.
Thepicking island, fully robotized comes into operation bypassing the faulty line, picking up the necessary material from the Modula with an anthropomorphic arm, thus avoiding stopping the entire production process and drastically reducing the down time.