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25/08/2010
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A revolutionary four-high lift truck battery charge and change facility has been installed by EnerSys, as part of a refurbishment project at the Co-Op's St Helens regional distribution centre.
 Chas Shepperson, national MHE fleet manager at the logistics arm of yhe Co-operative Group, says the new system makes best possible use of available space and completely eliminates manual handling.
He explains that the warehouse is currently building up its fully operation and will eventually work 24/7, delivering around 1.7 million cases a week to the Co-operative Group and newly rebranded local convenience stores.
Materials handling on site will then be managed using a fleet of 230 reach trucks, order pickers, pallet transporters and counterbalance trucks.
Shepperson says that, with a fleet of this size, it was important to ensure the battery charge and change area was configured for optimum use of space and operational efficiency.
"Multi-tier battery banks have proved themselves at our other distribution centres, and going four-high is a safe and flexible solution that follows best practice," says Shepperson.
Multi-tier installations have been around for some time, but have generally been restricted to two or three levels, because of limitations with the hydraulic performance of the handling equipment.
EnerSys eliminated these issues at yhe Co-Op's Chester-le-Street warehouse by creating a battery handling system with a fully-electric battery changing cart, without hydraulics. A version of this machine, which was based on the Pro Series BBH, was then built for handling batteries on four levels at St Helens.
In operation, when a lift truck battery change is required, the truck approaches the changing area and the driver disconnects its battery. A trained member of staff takes over and completes the change using the Pro-Series BBE, which runs on concealed rails alongside the charger banks.
The battery is removed an extending electro-magnet on the BBE, placed on its on-board roller bed and pushed into place for charging. A charged battery is then loaded by the BBE back onto the truck.
Shepperson says that truck uptime is sustained and potentially hazardous manual handling is eliminated in what becomes a simple one-man job.
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Author
Brian Wall
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