Technical building management for logistics centers

Logistics centers are booming. Stationary trade, online trade, refrigerated logistics, spare parts management... a wide range of tasks for the short- and medium-term storage and rapid distribution of goods are the drivers for this. In addition, the increasing digitization and networking of processes is leading to ever higher requirements in terms of speed and cost efficiency.

1. Independence of persons

The first goal in terms of efficient technical building management is to reduce dependencies on individual employees in order to counter the shortage of skilled workers. This is achieved not only by making technical systems as easy to operate as possible, but also by ensuring that substitution arrangements have as little impact as possible on the operation and quality of infrastructure use on site. It should also be possible for a colleague from other logistics centers or building technology departments to solve problems remotely. Therefore, particular attention should be paid to the following points:

• Make specifications for standardizing the system functionalities for managing and operating the building services equipment.
• Make sure that the operating dialogs for managing the technical systems are simple and intuitive so that employees from other trades and locations can easily find their way around.
• Ensure that your system can be accessed remotely so that representatives from other locations can access it via the network using any commercially available Internet browser. HTML5 is the standard for this.
• Make sure alarms and events can be forwarded to cell phones or email, if possible, so that the logistics center can be operated safely when the technician is not on site.
• Ensure that you can build escalation rules for critical alarms so that faults are safely resolved even if there is no response or feedback from the responsible colleagues.
• Make sure that the system adapts to your operational processes and supports, for example, the adjustment of time programs, error processing and troubleshooting or the automatic generation of reports as optimally as possible.
• Ensure complete documentation of user interventions in the system ("audit trial") so that you can understand why something went wrong and take countermeasures.

2. Reduction of system diversity

Another goal should be to reduce the number of IT systems. This will not only reduce the complexity of your IT, including maintenance and security patches. If you combine all building technology functions and data for your technical operations management in one system, you will also achieve a significant reduction in the maintenance and servicing of the systems and create a basis for the digitization of your processes. If you rely on open standards such as BACnet, KNX, ModBus or OPC/UA, you can combine the following systems in a manufactorer-neutral system without significant additional effort:

• Heating and ventilation technology incl. ceiling air heaters
• Air conditioning technology
• Refrigeration technology, for example for product cooling
• Sanitary technology
• Hall lighting including outdoor lighting
• Charging stations for forklifts and industrial trucks
• Compressed air technology
• Monitoring of gate, roller shutter, door and automatic doors
• Monitoring of security lighting
• Monitoring of elevators
• Consumption meter and energy data recording

By combining them, you benefit from uniform operation and documentation as well as standardized alarm routines, data logging and schedules. Even if you are not allowed or do not want to intervene in all systems centrally, combining all systems makes sense simply because of the data storage.

3. Production data acquisition

The operation of extensive technical systems offers the opportunity to record a lot of operating data - and data is known to be the gold of the 21st century. But even today, it increases the availability and efficiency of your logistics center if you collect operating data as purposefully as possible at the right time and store it for the long term. Here's what you should pay attention to:

• Capture all data that regulations require you to document and store in reports (storage temperatures, humidity, cold chain documentation, etc.).
  
• Automate the regular generation and distribution of these reports. Let the system monitor itself so reports don't get lost.
• As part of your energy management, also record the operating data of the loads that are responsible for the energy demand. It is ideal if you are informed of irregularities and can take countermeasures in the same system.
• For all systems that you have to maintain regularly to ensure operational safety or due to regulations, you should regularly document the most important operating parameters. Together with documentation of maintenance or repair work, they form the basis for optimizing maintenance and operating costs.
• Make sure that your system can display all important information about malfunctions, energy consumption and critical states on a dashboard.

4. Interpretability of your data and interfaces

An important point in terms of future-proofing your technical building management are specifications to ensure the interpretability of the data. Strategic topics such as continuous improvement of energy efficiency in accordance with ISO 50001 or digitization of processes to increase your competitiveness cannot be thought of if your data lie in a proprietary data graveyard and/or are not interpretable. If you don't make any specifications here, each of your system suppliers will be cooking their own soup. As a consequence, you will block important potentials for cost and resource efficiency. You should pay particular attention to the following points:

• Introduce a uniform labeling system that also includes the naming of data points for each technical function (for example, clear labeling of target and actual values, error messages, etc.).
• Ideally, define for each plant and each aggregate via which system they are to be networked (for example, BACnet) and which objects are to be used for which functions. The BACtwin from Kranz/Fritzenwallner provides a good basis here.
• Require that all operating data in the system be made available via open and documented interfaces (API = Application Programming Interface) for coupling with third-party systems. Only then can you easily dock ERP systems for cost allocation, your maintenance service providers, your help desk or other systems to the technology in your logistics center.

5. IT security and system architecture

The IT security requirements result in the most important non-functional requirements for operator workstation as well as energy management system. In addition, the operating concept as well as the ownership structure in your logistics center play an important role. You should pay particular attention to the following points:

• For efficient operation, you need a technical management system, even if you are not the building owner. Therefore, make your specifications independent of the ownership of your logistics center.
• If you can already foresee that your property will be sold to a third party in the near future, provide for a local installation of your technical management system. Then the system will run on a computer in the logistics center and, in case of doubt, will be sold together with the building. If you are going to keep the logistics center permanently in your real estate portfolio, there is nothing to be said against a central system in your central data center
• Clarify with your IT department whether cloud applications are an option for your company for processing operational data and personal data. Many companies attach importance to their systems functioning completely "on-premise", i.e. in their own IT infrastructure without connection to an external cloud.
• To implement the general requirements for IT security, your management system should be integrated into your company's authorization system. You can achieve this, for example, via authentication via Microsoft Active Directory.
• At the same time, you often need to be able to grant access to external users such as service providers, so the system also needs its own authorization assignment with roles and rights allocation.
• The implementation of these points will usually not lead to significant additional costs. On the contrary: with consistent implementation, you will manage your real estate portfolio more cost- and resource-efficiently and thus make a significant contribution to profitability and improvement of your carbon footprint.