Jungheinrich Chooses Configura to Develop Plant Design System

Configura Sverige AB this week announced that it is collaborating with Jungheinrich AG to develop various product configurators for complex logistics systems. The strategic partnership is intended to cover Jungheinrich's entire plant-design process, from initial planning and calculation to the creation of a bill of materials for customers.

“Configura has officially been awarded the contract as the central software solution for the ‘System CPQ’ topic at Jungheinrich, which covers our fully automated intralogistics solutions and several other products,” said Dr. Florian Kuzmany, head of business tools sales and warehouse and automation projects at Jungheinrich.

Founded in 1990, Configura creates software to help businesses design spaces in the commercial interior, materials handling, and kitchen and bath industries. The Linköping, Sweden-based company said its products incude CET Commercial Interiors, CET Material Handling, CET Kitchen & Bath, Design Studio, Stage, and Spec.

Configura has offices in the U.S., Malaysia, China, Japan, and Germany, as well as a growing user community of thousands of designers, salespeople, dealerships, and manufacturers around the world. The privately owned company said it has more than 300 employees worldwide and annual sales of more than $25 million (U.S.).

Configura collaboration continues with CET Material Handling

The cooperation between Jungheinrich and Configura began in 2020, starting with a pilot project for the configuration of automated pallet-racking systems. The partners plan to add more racking systems as well as materials handling components to Configura's CET Material Handling planning software.

Configura said CET Material Handling is designed to simplify the specifying and selling of products for the materials handling industry. It can quickly and accurately handle every step of the sales and order process, claimed the company.

Symbols represent manufacturers’ products and look and behave like actual products, it noted. Users can drag and drop components into 2D and 3D virtual environments, and the software tracks components, calculates pricing, and prevents user errors behind the scenes.

Users can create and generate layouts, quotes, photorealistic renderings, movies, installation drawings, reconfigurations and bills of materials – in other words, everything needed to propose on work and place orders, according to Configura.

Jungheinrich expects software ecosystem benefits

Jungheinrich said Configura's software will providing its sales department with "an efficient, intuitive, and cross-product project planning solution."

“We value Jungheinrich’s continued commitment to Configura,” said Rich Trahey, vice president of sales and marketing at Configura. “This strategic collaboration enables Jungheinrich to take full advantage of our software ecosystem—allowing them and their network of partners to concept and engineer warehouse systems with speed, accuracy, and efficiency."

As one of the world’s leading providers of intralogistics systems, Jungheinrich said it has been advancing the development of innovative and sustainable products and solutions for material flows for 70 years. The Hamburg, Germany-based family business said it "is committed to creating the warehouse of the future."

In 2022, Jungheinrich reported that its workforce of about 20,000 employees generated revenue of €4.76 billion ($5.22 billion U.S.). The global network covers 11 production plants, as well as service and sales companies in 42 countries.