GZ Media

Vinyl logistics under control thanks to digitalization and simulation

GZ Media, headquartered in Loděnice u Berouna, Czech Republic, is the world’s largest vinyl record manufacturer. It is behind every third vinyl record manufactured in the world today. In recent years, its management began considering manufacturing and logistics automation, and so in 2023 it invited Aimtec to join this project; it had already been using the MES solution from Aimtec since 2020.

GZ Media chose the Aimtec DCIx digitalisation platform to control production and logistics processes during the manufacturing and storage of semi-finished products and their release to final assembly. This system provides end‑to‑end warehouse logic control and seamlessly integrates all the automation equipment – the stacker cranes, conveyors and palletiser. Vinyl-record packages are placed into KLT boxes, which are transported by a conveyor to the stacker and then to the palletizer. The palletizer arranges the boxes on pallets in a precisely defined structure and ensures correct order pairing. Finished pallets, complete with printed labels, are sent to the assembly area for final packaging. The functionality of the solution was verified using the FlexSim simulation and visualization tool before launching the subsequent shipping project.

The project lasted three years with a total investment of EUR 4 million. The Aimtec DCIx solution was implemented in two phases over 1.5 years. The expected return on investment is 4.5 years.
Thanks to the automation of simple warehouse operations, headcount has been reduced by thirty.
The warehouse can store 1.4 million vinyl records.
The average number of human interventions in the component-handling process has been reduced from ten to two.