Bürs, Austria
Getzner Werkstoffe
Getzner Werkstoffe is one of the world's leading specialists in vibration isolation for the railway, construction, and industrial sectors. At its site in Bürs, the company produces PU-based high-tech materials that reduce vibrations and minimize noise, thereby increasing the comfort, safety, and service life of plants and buildings. Ensuring that these materials can be reliably refined requires intralogistics with exceptional precision. Together with LTW, a highly specialized honeycomb warehouse was implemented for this purpose, which includes a globally unique heavy-duty stacker crane for goods that are 31 meters long and weigh up to 13.5 tons.
Before the project began, the polyurethane mats, which can be up to 31 meters long, had to be rolled up and unrolled by hand. Storage space was limited, utilization was around 30 percent, and stacks of material blocked each other. Ergonomic work was virtually impossible. Meanwhile, material flow in this area was critical: if the warm mats were not laid flat and precisely on cassettes within 15 to 30 minutes, production could be jeopardized. The goal was to significantly increase capacity and efficiency with maximum reliability and precisely defined curing conditions over several weeks.
The solution had to work for a sensitive product that does not tolerate even the slightest indentation or temperature fluctuation. It required completely flat support surfaces, precise positioning in the storage structure, and precise temperature and humidity control. Additionally, a storage concept had to be implemented for 31-meter-long and 1.7-meter-wide mats, including 600 load carriers, transfer points with access control, and interfaces to on-site robots. The focus was on the key technical task of developing a handling system that could move these dimensions and loads with millimeter precision and permanent availability in a highly dynamic manner.
After extensive concept studies, the decision was made to use a customized honeycomb storage system with 31-meter-long single-depth compartments. LTW implemented the racking system in-house with one aisle, 600 storage locations, and 600 integrated load carriers, as well as twelve transfer stations with access control and robot interfaces. LTW developed a globally unique, heavy-duty stacker crane for these unusual dimensions: two permanently connected STC frames work synchronously to move a three-part lifting carriage with a total width of 31 meters. Despite a system weight of around 80 tons including load, the system achieves high dynamics and precision, with over 99 percent system availability. Additionally, special load carriers with roller strips and a pull-out device were designed to ensure safe entry and exit across the entire honeycomb depth. For safety reasons, all movement and wear processes were tested in a practical test setup and then fine-tuned. These efforts laid the logistical groundwork for stable, reproducible maturing processes and set a technological benchmark in long goods and heavy-duty storage.
Technological milestone
