Energy chains in a picking system with 20,000 movements a day

There are currently almost 21,000 pharmacies in Germany. Demographic change is also making itself felt here. Their number is expected to stabilise at around 17,000 to 18,000 over the next few years. The individual pharmacy will have to do more in the space available. In addition, the population is getting older and older. In this environment, the topic of automation plays an important role, as set-up and floor space vary greatly. Medication handling systems must be both compact and modular in order to allow for easy expansion and safe supply.
This also applies to the customised order picking systems from Omnicell GmbH. The supplier in the field of medication logistics required a solution for the energy supply of its systems, whereby speeds of up to 4 m/s and accelerations of up to 2.5 m/s2 can occur with a travel distance of up to 17 metres. The travelling speeds and accelerations are associated with a high continuous load. In a classic pharmacy, the daily storage and retrieval processes are around 300, in hospitals this can increase to up to 20,000 journeys. The storage capacities of the individual systems are between 9,000 and 60,000 packs. Depending on the configuration of the individual system, storage can be between 150 and 1,200 packs per hour and retrieval from 300 to 8,700 packs per hour.

Powerful energy supply systems and cables from our energy chain programme have been used in Omnicell's systems from day one. Specifically, e-chain® of the E2/000 series are used, which can be folded up inside and out and are characterised by their easy and versatile assembly.
Usually, between two and five fully assembled energy chain systems, so-called "readychains", are used, which combine robustness and abrasion resistance and run quietly and with low vibration. They are also space-saving to install thanks to their small bend radius. This is very important in order to make optimum use of the space available in the medicine store. Due to the very small pitch of the chain links and the resulting reduced polygon effect, there are hardly any vibrations or shocks. As a result, customers in pharmacies hardly notice the picking processes, which deliver the medicines as if by magic.
They contribute to the good technical data of the systems and at the same time minimise the assembly work.
But we also provide the cables themselves. At Omnicell, functionally reliable servo, bus, control and pneumatic cables from the chainflex® programme ensure the required performance data for fast picking of medication packaging.