Clever on the train: Logistics master plan for Alstom

The Alstom factory site in Bautzen breathes industrial history dating back to 1846.
At the beginning of 2023, Marcel Richter and his colleague Simon Schröder walked transport routes between small halls where the first electric streetcars were built from 1897. When the Senior Logistics and Factory Planner felt slabs with large joints under his shoes, it was clear to Marcel Richter: “The ageing floors are not ideal for forklifts.” LOGSOL was asked to draw up a logistics master plan for Alstom Transportation Germany, the rail vehicle manufacturer with a French parent company.
The plan is to double the indoor and outdoor storage space at the site to 51,000 m2.
In future, a site conversion in Bautzen envisages specialization in the area of final assembly, while other core competencies will be relocated to other Alstom plants.

Production space freed up for logistics

“As part of our site transformation, we want to insource logistics from external locations,” says Tobias Sturm, Logistics Manager at Alstom in Bautzen, who is responsible for a division with more than 250 employees including logistics service providers. A large amount of externally rented logistics space is to be returned to the plant.

“We needed a concept for how we could best use freed-up production space for logistics,” he explains. He has a long-standing, trusting partnership with LOGSOL thanks to the RampMan^® and BinMan^® software solutions. In addition: “The expertise from the logistics master plan for the Alstom plant in Henningsdorf near Berlin convinced us that we were working with the right partner.”

Data collection and as-is analysis initially meant legwork for Richter and his team. The experts not only had to record areas in detail on the Bautzen site, but also at six external sites up to 40 km away that were to be integrated.

In doing so, they took into account all relevant parameters of the material flow and warehouse structures:
Where does goods receipt take place?
Which warehouse technology is used?
How are picking areas designed?
But the path to the master plan was a rocky one.

LOGSOL has a lot of experience in setting up a logistics quantity structure and extrapolating it for the target scenario. However, a lot of master and movement data is required to be able to calculate and analyze everything. “The challenge was that we didn’t have a good data basis,” says Tobias Sturm.

On a day-to-day basis, there was a lack of capacity to enter everything for “a fully comprehensive picture” in SAP’s Enterprise Resource Planning system. He therefore appreciates all the more that LOGSOL was able to “flexibly and intelligently solve” the data acquisition: “Short-term requests were taken into account very quickly and unbureaucratically.” For Marcel Richter, dealing with little initial data in a structured and analytical way is part of the daily project business. Even if this meant taking “longer than expected” to record the actual situation.

Using the existing infrastructure

“The fragmentation of the historically grown site had an impact on logistics,” says Marcel Richter. If there was not enough space for a racking warehouse, he had to put the pieces of the puzzle together differently.
After just four months, LOGSOL delivered a neatly planned result for additional logistics
space, including the necessary construction work.
“We received an excellent decision template in a very manageable period of time,” says Tobias Sturm happily. “We are happy to use LOGSOL for further conceptual support,” he says. Marcel Richter is already warming up for this: the concept is to be implemented in Bautzen by 2026, and LOGSOL will be involved again in the first partial implementation.