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Unlocking Ware­house Secrets: Data-Driven Intral­o­gis­tics in Action

WHAT WE
MADE HAPPEN

GEBHARDT Intral­o­gis­tics Group and Dunker­mo­toren imple­mented a fully func­tional Industry 4.0 solu­tion at GEBHARDT’s oper­a­tional ware­house in under three months. The collab­o­ra­tion inte­grated predic­tive main­te­nance, seam­less data connec­tivity, and the stan­dard­ized Asset Admin­is­tra­tion Shell (AAS). By combining the Galileo IoT® plat­form with smart motor data and cloud infra­struc­ture, the result is a scal­able, inter­op­er­able intral­o­gis­tics system that has become a refer­ence model within the Open Industry 4.0 Alliance. 

The live envi­ron­ment is GEBHARDT’s 1,200-square-meter logis­tics center in Sinsheim, oper­a­tional since 2018. It now serves as both an internal logis­tics bench­mark and a testbed for alliance members. The deployed solu­tion includes GEBHARDT Cheetah oper­ating devices and StoreBiter® shut­tles (OLS and MLS), powered by Dunkermotoren’s BG66 and BG75 motors. These were connected through stan­dard­ized AAS struc­tures, visu­al­ized in Galileo IoT® and inte­grated into both the GEBHARDT and Dunker­mo­toren cloud plat­forms.

Notably, the project goes beyond indi­vidual archi­tec­tures and enables cloud-to-cloud inte­gra­tion via MQTT, laying the foun­da­tion for a universal, cross-company archi­tec­ture.

 

  • Real produc­tion envi­ron­ment: GEBHARDT ware­house in Sinsheim 
  • Motor data (BG66, BG75) connected via AAS 
  • Inte­gra­tion into Galileo IoT® and Dunker­mo­toren cloud 
  • Real-time digital twins for main­te­nance predic­tion 
  • Cloud-to-cloud archi­tec­ture with MQTT and AAS stan­dard
  • Data visu­al­iza­tion directly within Galileo IoT® (no custom dash­boards)
  • Imple­men­ta­tion Award winner by OI4
At Hannover Messe, we showed an example of how we will access one of our motors in one of the GEBHARDT shut­tles live via a tablet in the GEBHARDT ware­house. We can also show the status data visu­ally in a stan­dard­ised way, i.e. not in the form of a demo programmed for trade fair purposes that only works in a specific config­u­ra­tion. At GEBHARDT, the visu­al­i­sa­tion of the stan­dard­ised status data provided via the AAS is carried out directly in Galileo® IoT without having to inte­grate sepa­rate dash­boards for example.

Markus Weishaar

Managing Director EGS Automa­tion GmbH by Dunker­mo­toren

THE CHAL­LENGE
WE SOLVED

Intral­o­gis­tics systems are often frag­mented, with limited visi­bility and propri­etary inte­gra­tions. The project solved the chal­lenge of making real-time compo­nent data usable across systems. It enabled predic­tive main­te­nance and system-wide trans­parency by lever­aging stan­dard­ized data models in a live ware­house setup. 

Crucially, the project tackled fail safety as a prac­tical require­ment. The aim was to detect anom­alies in motor behavior within the shut­tles before they lead to break­downs. To achieve this, the team focused on an Alliance-compliant inte­gra­tion based on the Asset Admin­is­tra­tion Shell, which defines Digital Twins in partic­ular. The various shut­tles in the ware­house are not only phys­i­cally present but also virtu­ally inte­grated via their digital twins into the over­ar­ching cloud archi­tec­ture of the Alliance. This enables stan­dard­ized, reli­able real-time moni­toring with the goal of predic­tive main­te­nance and the avoid­ance of down­time in ware­house oper­a­tions. The imple­men­ta­tion at GEBHARDT’s Inno­va­tion Center proves that such moni­toring is not only feasible, but can be rolled out rapidly, even in brown­field settings.

THE TEAM
THAT DELIV­ERED

WHY THE RESULTS
MATTER (AND FOR WHOM)

The solu­tion enhances trans­parency, reduces down­time, and increases oper­a­tional effi­ciency in intral­o­gis­tics. For oper­a­tors and tech­nology providers, it offers a reusable, stan­dards-based model that lowers inte­gra­tion effort and accel­er­ates time-to-value. 

Beyond its tech­nical success, the project is being contin­u­ously expanded with contri­bu­tions from other OI4 members. Part­ners such as Captron, Bizerba, ifm, Pepperl+Fuchs, Sick, Phoenix Contact, and SAP are bringing in tech­nolo­gies including touch switches, weighing systems, sensor data analysis, energy manage­ment, and cloud-based data eval­u­a­tion. This makes the solu­tion increas­ingly robust and multi­di­men­sional, offering direct value to logis­tics teams, compo­nent suppliers, and system inte­gra­tors alike.

 

BETTER
TOGETHER

This project shows what’s possible through collab­o­ra­tive imple­men­ta­tion. It invites other members to reuse, adapt, and extend the solu­tion turning best prac­tices into shared progress within the OI4 Alliance. 

With use cases imple­mented across six OI4 process houses — Asset Onboarding, Condi­tion Moni­toring, Process Twin, Product Twin, Enter­prise Logistic, and Cross Enter­prise — the initia­tive demon­strates real-world, multi-partner inte­gra­tion. It’s not a pilot or show­case but a fully imple­mented setup that continues to grow with each new member.

As the project evolves, it provides an almost out-of-the-box path for other Alliance members to join and benefit from an inter­op­er­able, produc­tion-ready intral­o­gis­tics plat­form.

Sounds inter­esting to you? Register here:

 

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INSIGHTS
AND Q&A 

What makes this project a refer­ence for other members?
It combines real-world deploy­ment with reusable archi­tec­ture, offering a proven pattern for inte­grating AAS, IoT, and cloud infra­struc­ture in oper­a­tional envi­ron­ments. 
How did the collab­o­ra­tion benefit both compa­nies?
By aligning on open stan­dards and real use cases, both teams were able to rapidly deliver results that are scal­able and applic­able beyond this single use case. 
What role did the OI4 Alliance play?
We provided a shared frame­work and stan­dard­iza­tion approach, enabling seam­less inte­gra­tion and accel­er­ating time to imple­men­ta­tion. 
Is this solu­tion limited to ware­houses?
No. While the project focused on intral­o­gis­tics, the archi­tec­ture and method­ology are trans­fer­able to other Industry 4.0 contexts where asset trans­parency and data-driven main­te­nance are rele­vant.