Woodworking with
modern technology

For Martin Linden, a sawmill is an extremely large machine "for turning round timber into wood with corners." Linden is the master electrician and maintenance engineer at ante-holz GmbH. The company is one of the leading timber enterprises in Europe with four plants in Germany and Poland. At the headquarters of the ante group in Bromskirchen-Somplar the plant premises occupy an area of 58 hectares with four saw lines, production lines for construction lumber, glued laminated timber and sawn timber. The site also includes impregnating halls, grading areas and round lumber storage areas, a pellet plant and a total of three thermal power stations where 14 MW of heating capacity and 2 MW of electrical power are generated with bark and wood chips. This allows for 100 percent utilisation of raw materials.

The group has 750 employees, with 250 working in three shifts in the Bromskirchen plant. Every machine at ante is equipped with numerous sensors. They forward information about the operating states or positions of the workpieces to the relevant programmable logic controller which every machine has. The harsh environment with heavy accumulation of dust makes great demands on the sensors.

Optimised spare parts logistics

Martin Linden was looking on the Internet for ways to optimise production when he came across autosen.com. To reduce possible machine downtimes to a minimum, the master electrician has set up a separate spare parts warehouse with autosen sensors. In addition to fast availability at a high level, the excellent terms offered by autosen are important for ante. Since the company buys exclusively replacements for faulty sensors it is barely possible to estimate the need in advance. Based on the positive experience, all position sensor systems will be replaced with autosen products wherever possible in the medium to long term.