AdaCore today announced that Consafe Logistics, the leading European supplier of warehouse management solutions, has deployed AdaCore’s GNAT Pro development environment for the Ada programming language to implement mission-critical firmware within its innovative Warehouse Control Systems (WCS). The selection of GNAT Pro Ada enables Consafe Logistics to meet stringent assurance requirements, helping ensure that its systems operate reliably, safely and securely at its customers’ large and complex warehouse sites.

Consafe Logistics solutions keep more than 500 warehouses in 30 countries running, delivering goods to millions of customers. Demonstrating their importance, one warehouse is the start or destination for 30% of all daily grocery traffic in Sweden, while another in Germany will cause tailbacks to the public highway if the system stops for just 25 minutes.

Consafe Logistics chose Ada for the high-assurance firmware within its WCS solution due to its high levels of reliability, security, maintainability and performance. Ada’s strong typing and other compile-time checks catch errors even before the code is run, and the language’s run-time checks will detect errors such as buffer overrun during testing, thereby helping to keep the fielded system free from vulnerabilities. Consafe Logistics adopted GNAT Pro, replacing an internally created solution, as it enables shorter development cycles, provides confidence that code will work correctly when compiled and is backed by comprehensive support provided by AdaCore’s GNAT Pro developers themselves. Maintenance and change management is easier, meaning Consafe Logistics requires a small Ada development team even though its solution consists of millions of lines of code and handles very complex automation equipment and warehouses.

“We are always evolving our products to meet new requirements on the market and to leverage new technologies, to constantly help our customers to develop their business. At the same time, we need to keep the existing mission critical functionality running flawlessly 24x7x365 at customer sites,” said Andreas Anyuru, CTO at Consafe Logistics. “Relying on Ada and the solutions from AdaCore for some of the firmware in our most complex automation solutions gives us the robustness needed in our Warehouse Control System solution.”

“In an increasingly digital world, businesses need to guarantee the highest levels of reliability and security in their software,” said Jamie Ayre, Commercial Director, AdaCore. “As the experience of Consafe Logistics demonstrates, the combination of Ada and GNAT Pro provides the ability to innovate quickly and maintain safety and security properties within critical software solutions which are relied on by major warehouses around the world.”