Sector: production of taps and fittings
Location: Novara – Italy
Established in 1954, Paini is an important Italian manufacturer of kitchen, bathroom and shower taps and fittings. Over the years, it has grown from a small artisan company into a benchmark in the sector, and is now a joint-stock company that boasts a 100,000 sqm headquarters in the province of Novara, almost 400 employees and an annual in-house full-cycle production reaching 4 million pieces.
Driven by its commitment to continuous improvement, the company has decided to reorganise the spaces dedicated to the storage of semi-finished items and of the components needed to manufacture its products. And it involved Wipro Ferretto in its project.
Before the introduction of the automatic storage systems, Rubinetterie Paini stored components on traditional racking and transported the material to the production department using only forklifts. After carefully studying the flows, Wipro Ferretto suggested that the storage of material should be reorganised using two types of automatic storage systems according to the size of the unit loads: an automatic storage system for pallets and bins and a Miniload automatic storage system for boxes.
The two systems follow independent routes to convey the material to a single picking area, where the operators can retrieve all the components necessary to make the finished products, taking them simultaneously from the “pallet storage system” and from the “box storage system”.
A Fast-Ring shuttle circuit, designed to handle pallets and deliver them to the picking bays, also makes it possible to optimise machine cycles. In fact, pallets can be placed within a “buffer” area, where at the right time they will be ready for successive picking operations. The stacker crane missions are thus performed in a targeted manner, which saves time and optimises the operators' work.
Following the radical change in component management and the switch to automation, Rubinetterie Paini can now benefit from:
