Rubiks Cube - Old Farts Day Out.

Ouwe-lullen-dag.


Once a year, the company treats its pensioners to a treat. This is in the form of a splendid meal with the director and dignitaries. Before this we sit through presentations of plans and prospects. Some among us fall asleep with our eyes open, nodding in agreement every six seconds, a technique honed by years of practise during our long careers. I loved building systems, problem solving and generally making things work, but was never too keen on the 'business' side of it all. Statistics, strategies, trends and pie-charts. This time we would get to see how one of the projects started after our retirement has come to fruition. The Technische Unie Distribution Centrum in Alphen was always a base for winning projects from the time of the old farts, and the heady days of the Logistiek Prijs.


Now it would go a stage further. At a cost of many millions, a giant rubik's cube system allows stuff to be stored in (in the initial stage) 60,000 plastic crates. Eventally 180.000. Only the system knows where stuff is, and it works it to the front, hours before needed, so that it arrives, along with other crates, to form an order for a customer. The Picking Ladies control about 6 meters of the 'Picking Face' and they follow simple instructions. "Take 3 out of tray 4" etc. The crate with the order then dissappears and eventually arrives at a place where it is stacked on a pallette and goes into a truck. Each stack of crates goes into the truck in the sequence that it needs to come out along the drivers route. Nobody has touched anything except the Picking Ladies until the driver takes something out to deliver it. He only has a list of where to stop. It cost a lot of money, but it keeps Technische Unie one step ahead. Most impressive.

A model of the project. The brown area is the old forklift truck part, still needed for products too big for the crates. The grey is the new system. At the top is the cable park.

Old Farts descend into the edge of the old warehouse

The cable park.

The old and the new meet. On the richt, things are put into crates which are then transported into the cube. If something is not often ordered, it will go into the deeper corners., Fast moving products are placed closer to the Picking Ladies

Looking over the top of the cube, about 14 meters high

The lights are from one of the tall, thin 'cranes' that run between the stacks of crates. The crane is 13 meters high and travels at 6 meters a second on linear motors. On either side of the crane, arms rush up and down to move boxes from one place to another, either for picking or for storage.

One of the many picking rows. These are found between the storage lanes of the cube. The cube is 14 meters high, so there is another picking row beneath each one on this floor. Each Picking Lady has a station of about 6 meters long. Lights and numbers tell her what and how many to pick. The order goes onto a track for despatch, the crates go back into the cube. Everything is checked at each step of the way. Cameras scan bar codes and the crates are weighed constantly to make sure that the right stuff is still present.

Stuff coming out of the cube to the sorting buffer, where the crates are formed into full truck loads and pushed into the trucks.

The most notable thing about the whole place is the silence. There are few people, and they are only looking to see if The System is running properly. It is.

Next time you see a Technische Unie truck on the road, you will know what is behind it. A splendid diner with the Top Brass, and the old farts all agreed that the company is doing well. Even without us.