e + h Services AG is a wholesale company that has been in existence for 90 years and supplies Swiss retailers with branded goods for work, gardening and the home. To ensure that customers benefit from very short delivery times, e + h Services relies on a modern logistics facility! At the company’s headquarters, a stock hall was converted into an automated logistics centre. The entire interior of the hall is filled with high-bay racks from which goods are automatically removed and replenished. In order to utilise the maximum storage capacity of the space, the manual packaging area was placed under the high-bay racking system in the hall as an elongated, flat structure.

The so-called picking tunnel, which runs lengthwise through the hall, is used as a transport axis for goods delivery. The goods are transported from the high-bay racking via openings in the tunnel roof to the packing stations and from there directly to the vehicles. The tunnel is a 52.3 m long, 11 m wide and 5 m high wooden structure. The walls are made of 16 cm thick CLT. 61.5 cm high kielsteg elements form the 11-metre-span tunnel roof. The kielsteg elements support the moving logistics robots with a payload requirement of 5.89 kN/m². The deflection requirement is L/800.

Despite high loads and the space requirements for the order picking process, the tunnel construction must remain as slim as possible in order to maximise storage capacity. Kielsteg makes this possible! The wooden surfaces in the order picking tunnel create a pleasant working atmosphere for the staff, even in the midst of the highly dynamic logistics system. The structure was built by Holzbau Jäggi Dulliken AG. Atlas Tragwerke AG in Zurich provided the engineering and timber construction planning. The kielsteg elements and their workshop planning were supplied by Holz Stürm in Goldach.