BHS
Global Logistics

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BHS Global Logistics may still be a young company, but it is far from a blank slate. It serves as the logistics partner of BHS Corrugated Maschinen- und Anlagenbau GmbH, a global supplier of equipment for the corrugated board industry. In Weiherhammer near Weiden, a team of around 150 people handles warehousing, order picking and transport, both for the machine manufacturer and for third-party customers. BHS Global Logistics sees itself as an end-to-end service provider, offering its customers a complete logistics package from a single source. For third-party customers, the team specializes primarily in sea freight packaging and customs clearance.

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Since 2023, the team has been working in a brand-new logistics center covering around 26,500 square meters. The facility meets the latest energy standards and has a clear long-term goal: to evolve into a logistics park built around autonomous mobility. That ambition is now part of day-to-day operations. Since July 2026, the Filics Streamliner has been moving pallets from goods receiving to the staging area, with no driver and no turning maneuvers. The plan is to reach up to 100 transports per day.

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More Storage, More Efficiency

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The manual pallet warehouse alone has 14 aisles and around 8,000 storage locations, plus an automated small-parts warehouse with more than 34,000 bin locations. Every day, trucks arrive here with spare parts that need to make their way into storage quickly and reliably.

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Space has always been a precious commodity. “The facilities and the building conditions over at the BHS site are limited, and that’s why we built a new building,” explains Managing Director Christian Schneider. Yet even in the new logistics center, not a single square meter was to go to waste. Conventional forklift systems need room to maneuver and turn, and every trip from goods receiving to storage ties up an employee who is then missing elsewhere.

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The goal was therefore clear: “It’s about increasing productivity and making our processes more efficient,” says Matthias Fischer, Head of Business Operations & Strategy. What the team needed was a solution that requires little space yet can still be deployed flexibly.

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How Filics Came Into the Picture

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The fact that Filics is a young company was no obstacle for BHS Global Logistics. On the contrary, it was part of the appeal. “We’re working with Filics even though they’re not completely finished yet,” says Schneider. “But that’s exactly what we need here. We’re not finished in logistics either. And Filics helps us with its system, which is completely different, to not just make things a little better, but to approach them differently.”

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What is different above all is the underlying principle: Two flat, mechanically independent robots drive underneath the pallet, lift it directly off the floor using their integrated lifting mechanism and move it through the warehouse without maneuvering or turning. With a turning radius of just 1.9 meters, the Streamliner can navigate aisles as narrow as 1.2 meters and requires up to 50 percent less space than conventional solutions. No separate transfer stations are needed, and the VDA 5050 standard allows the system to be integrated into higher-level fleet management systems.

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In the end, it wasn’t a single feature that tipped the scales, but the combination: The Streamliner needs very little floor space, maneuvers nimbly through tight areas and handles its transports on its own, with no one behind the wheel. It is precisely this combination that makes it so valuable for a logistics center like the one operated by BHS Global Logistics.

How the Process Works Today

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Spend a day in goods receiving in Weiherhammer and you’ll quickly see how naturally the Streamliner has become part of the workflow. The spare parts delivered by truck are unloaded and staged in goods receiving: on wooden or plastic Euro pallets, with collars, cartons or bins, and with load weights of up to 800 kilograms.

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From here, the Streamliner takes over. The two units drive underneath the pallet, lift it and carry it around 60 to 70 meters through the hall, past rack aisles and traffic routes, to the staging area. A complete transport takes about four minutes. At the staging area, a forklift picks up the pallet and takes it to its storage location in the pallet warehouse. People and robots work hand in hand.

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What stands out is how smoothly the Streamliner has fit into the existing environment. “Nothing had to be changed in the hall, simply because we integrated it in a way that meant we didn’t have to adapt anything,” says Fabian Rottenberger, Process Manager Logistics & Systems.

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Since the Filics Streamliner began operating in the logistics center, pallet transport between goods receiving and the staging area runs steadily in the background. The repetitive trips that used to tie up a forklift and an employee are now handled by the robot.

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For the team, this means fewer monotonous transport runs and more time for other value-adding tasks in the logistics center. And if something does come up, the team knows Filics has its back. “If there’s ever a bigger problem, we have good customer support from Filics,” says Rottenberger.

Looking Ahead

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For BHS Global Logistics, simple pallet transport from A to B with the Streamliner is just the beginning. For the company, autonomous transport solutions and robotics are firmly part of the future of logistics. And for Christian Schneider, continuous development means “above all, trying out things that don’t yet exist in this form.”

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And the ideas are already there. The team sees particular potential in several Streamliners working together as a swarm, for example when loading trucks. And Matthias Fischer already has the next goal in sight: “We expect a great deal from the Filics system in the future, above all that we’ll be able to handle all pallet transports between the halls fully automated with Filics.”

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Step by step, BHS Global Logistics is turning the vision behind its new logistics center into reality: a logistics park that brings together innovation, sustainability and autonomous mobility.