Stora Enso Imatra mills’ new 30 000 tons Automated Roll Warehouse with 8 connection points 1. Production from 3 board machines, at machine floor level, roll flow in random order from production winders. 4. Raw mother rolls for PE coater #2, roll flow over the railroad to ground floor. 2. Finished and wrapped customer rolls from the new PE plant, at ground floor level, after Kraft wrapping of finished rolls for shipping. 5. Raw mother rolls for PE coater #6, roll flow on ground floor. 3. Finished (PE coated) unwrapped customer rolls, at ground floor level, buffered to wait Kraft wrapping of finished rolls for shipping. 6. Automated truck trailer loading (main gate) for satellite PE plant on ground floor. 7. Finished PE coated rolls to shipping dock, over railroad rails to ground floor in shipping warehouse. 8. Automated trailer loading (reserve gate) for satellite PE plant on ground floor. “This new automated roll warehouse simplified a lot our internal logistics. Now we need only one operator to control the process…” Project manager Tommi Myller, Stora Enso Imatra mills, comments: “This new automated roll warehouse simplified a lot our internal logistics. Now we need only one operator to control the process to buffer and sort the production between paper machines, PE coating and shipping. This is a big step forward from the earlier days of decentralised operations with multiple clamp truck drivers and supervisors to manage and handle the intermediate inventory.” TRANSROLL CONCEPT’S KEY ELEMENTS This automated warehouse in Imatra operates both as an intermediate roll buffer for rolls to be delivered to PE extrusion coating, and also as a shipping roll buffer for finished customer rolls. The volume was defined to be ~30 000 tons with a wide roll dimension range (diameter 800-2100, width 400-3200, mass 400-8700 kg). There are two stacker cranes on the one middle aisle of the storage. This demonstrates the redundancy in the system. One stacker crane can be parked at the service area, while the other one continues to serve the production area. Two pre-sorter cars were added to the new PE plant side to handle the in-take and sorting of the finished PE coated rolls, and to deal with the automated truck trailer loading. These four roll set moving units are the only powered elements in this system beside the connecting conveyors. The rack itself is a static structure which supports the cladding (walls and roof). Rolls lie on their bellies in V- shaped channels – as though in a cradle. Rolls are not pushed or dragged, they are lifted up and lowered down directly from channels or from the conveyors taking rolls in or out by Figure 3. Project Manager Tommi Myller from Stora Enso (photo: Stora Enso, Mikko Nikkinen). Table 1. The above Table shows how integration into the mill layout required eight IN & OUT connection points in total for the new automated roll warehouse in Stora Enso Imatra. WORLD PULP&PAPER 59