Background
KEDA Industrial Group Co., Ltd. was founded in 1992, listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange in 2002 (stock code: 600499), and launched GDR listing in 2022 (stock code: KEDA). Its business covers building materials machinery, overseas building materials, lithium battery materials and machinery, with sub-businesses including clean energy and environmental protection, hydraulic pumps, and smart energy. KEDA owns many famous brands such as KEDA, HLT, DLT, Welko, Twyford, and SureMaker, with products sold to more than 60 countries and regions. Through 30 years of innovative development, KEDA has transformed from a single equipment supplier to a complete ceramic plant engineering supplier, becoming a leading enterprise in China and globally.
Pain Points
Prior to the Modula solution, KEDA’s warehouse used manual shelving and faced the following challenges:
- Large footprint: The shelving for small parts occupied a significant amount of floor space, resulting in low space utilization.
- High labor intensity: Warehouse operators walked extensively throughout the warehouse every day, averaging more than 20,000 steps, leading to high physical exertion.
- Low picking efficiency: Traditional manual picking was time-consuming, taking about 2 minutes to retrieve one material item.
- High staffing requirements: The warehouse required 8 employees to maintain daily operations.
- Difficult management: With more than 5,000 types of parts in use across the business unit, management was complex and could not effectively support lean production requirements.
Solution
In April 2022, KEDA began considering smart warehousing solutions. The company compared more than 10 domestic and foreign brands and ultimately concluded that Modula offered the best cost-effectiveness among foreign brands, placing a one-time order for 4 Modula VLMs.
Currently, KEDA has 6 Modula VLMs serving across four different departments. In March 2023, when KEDA’s subsidiary DLT visited the factory, they were impressed by Modula and purchased two more in May. All units operate reliably without any failures, winning recognition from everyone at KEDA.
With Modula VLMs, KEDA has transformed its material handling from “person-to-goods” to “goods-to-person,” fundamentally changing the traditional material picking approach.
After a production order is created in the SAP system, the material picking request is automatically sent to the operator’s PDA scanner and the Modula VLM control system. The VLM automatically delivers the required tray to the picking bay. After the operator picks the materials and confirms, the system completes the outbound transaction and the tray automatically returns to storage. The entire process is fully automated without manual intervention.
