Major distribution centre investment is underpinned with state-of-the-art innovative productivity and energy efficiency technologies
Major distribution centre investment is underpinned with state-of-the-art innovative productivity and energy efficiency technologies
To allow for major expansion, Witt-Gruppe, a member of the Otto Group, has made a €30 million investment in building a state-of-the-art distribution centre (DC). The new centre, outside the town of Weiden, Germany, is part of the Witt-Gruppe’s Vision 2020, through which it plans to position itself as the most profitable Europe-wide group of retailers in the 50-plus market while achieving a 50% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2020.
Efficiency is central to the design of the new centre; major cuts in energy consumption are provided by an advanced automated wood-chip heating system and by the world’s first installation of the Crisplant LS-4000 sorters, introducing an innovative motor technology which allows Witt-Gruppe to achieve a direct energy saving of over 76% per year, compared to sorters using conventional motor technology.
Diverse set of handling requirements
As the DC for the entire Witt-Gruppe catalogue and website, the system requirements were that it must handle a diverse range of clothing and household items, as well as CDs and DVDs. The weights of these items vary from a few grams to up to 7 kg and include a wide range of shapes.
Items are picked from stock in batches and accumulate in totes before being conveyed to the sorting system. At each induction, one person manually removes items from the totes and places them into the dynamic induction.
The items are conveyed from the packing sorters into packing chutes. In this configuration, one sorter is installed above another and each sorter discharges to a chute in two layers, giving a total of four layers. Each layer has two compartments for holding individual order batches. This provides a total of eight orders in one chute at any time. Two additional chutes are provided for no-read items, two chutes for early or late items as well as one for EAN bar-code control.
Speed of distribution improved
Each of the dynamic inductions at the cross-belt packing sorters can process 3,000 items per hour, while the sorters together in total can handle up to 24,000 items per hour.
The control system checks that the items in each order have arrived in the correct batch sequence for the shipping labels, which are attached at the chute. The size of the order and the shape of the items determine whether they are packed in bags, boxes or placed on a conveyor for automatic foil sealing, before being conveyed to the shipping sorter.
A customer specific sorter configuration maximises the shipping sorter capacity. This particular configuration gives two dedicated sorting and discharge areas -one for boxes and one for bags, which makes it possible to achieve a sorting capacity up to 17,000 orders per hour.
Orders in boxes go directly on the shipping sorter via fully automatic inductions for sorting and discharge to boom conveyors leading the boxes directly into trucks for loose reload or discharge for manually separated when packing on pallets. Orders in bags are transported to the shipping sorter inductions in bulk and manually put on dynamic inductions for sorting and discharge into chutes to be manually packed into plastic totes, which are stacked and loaded on trucks. Each of the inductions at the shipping sorter can process up to 4,200 orders per hour.
Making the most of DC environment
The entire packing and shipping sorter system combines a space-saving footprint with very high capacity. In the course of one year, the complete sorting system handles an average of 180,000 items per day.
The Crisplant system controller at the Witt-Gruppe site provides a complete user interface for sorter control including set-up of sort plans, sorting parameters, and all other high level controls features including monitoring of carrier status. The information system generates standard and customer specific reports providing a dynamic graphical overview of the sorters.
The batch progress system calculates the estimated and actual packing times, including scheduled breaks to provide an estimated completion time for each batch. This high level of visibility also increases the efficiency of other logistics tasks, such as coordinating the arrival of trucks at the loading dock.
Large screens, installed by each row of chutes in the packing area, allow staff to monitor the progress of the batches when packing the orders. Actual packing times are displayed against the estimated times for each batch to provide an indication of when the manual packing process should increase speed.
