Alstef Group automates the new building of L’Oréal’s production plant
Alstef Group at L’Oréal
- Location : Ormes (FR, 45)
- Supply : complete system with a fleet of 14 AGV
- Industry : Cosmetics
L’Oréal decided to increase the capacity of its plant in Ormes, France and to continue the automation of its production lines with Alstef Group in order to further improve the site’s performance.
L’Oréal Group is the world leader in cosmetics, with a turnover of €32.28 billion in 2021 and 88,000 employees worldwide. The L’Oréal factory in Ormes, founded in 1969, is one of the group’s 40 sites and one of the largest make-up factories in the world. Every day, one million items are manufactured on site and shipped throughout Western Europe. The plant, which operates 24 hours a day, has 300 employees.
In order to increase the flow and storage capacity of the existing site, L’Oréal decided to expand. Thus, a new 5,000 square meter building was built in 2020. In addition to the existing 25,000 square meters, it now houses a 13-meter high automated warehouse made up of more than 7,600 locations.
A turnkey solution for automated storage with AGV
A fleet of Alstef Group | BA Systèmes AGVs has already been operating on the Ormes site since 2011. Located in the production area, they work daily to supply the lines with component pallets and empty pallets, as well as to evacuate the finished products. The new solution designed by Alstef Group composed of a fleet of 14 AGVs is now working in association with this first installation.
Alstef Group’s teams have designed a complete solution with 6 tri-directional AGVs to manage the high-bay storage with a last drop-off level at almost 12 meters. In addition, a fleet of 8 Loadstar, « turtle » AGV-AMR for unitary pallet transport, takes care of the reception of the pallets of raw materials and packaging items, as well as the feeding and evacuation of the weighing function. The Loadstars are a true concentrate of technology, with 360° safety features, opportunity charging of the batteries, and a powerful mixed tracking system based on contour localisation and laser guidance.
The project also includes the integration of a buffering line at the reception area, which serves as an interface for all pallets before storage.
All orders are transmitted by the plant’s computer system to the supervision system developed by Alstef Group. As the system’s intelligence and conductor, the software suite manages the fleet in real time and assigns transport orders to the AGVs.
The installation of this complete solution allows to efficiently support the growth of the flows of the L’Oréal site in Ormes.
A renewed trust
Alstef Group has been supporting L’Oréal for more than twelve years in its automation projects. The first site equipped with an Alstef Group solution was the L’Oréal plant in Rambouillet. The installation which counts more than 20 AGVs today is in operation since 2010. Since then, about ten sites benefit from Alstef Group’s expertise and about a hundred AGVs participate to improve the production flows of L’Oréal Group’s factories in France and abroad.
“L’Oréal trusted us to deploy this large-scale automated system based on Alstef Group solutions. We are very happy to put our technologies and our expertise at the service of the performance of the Ormes site and proud to perpetuate, project after project, a collaboration of more than 12 years with the L’Oréal Group”, underlines Uwe Klärner, Sales Director Intralogistics Alstef Group.