Retail / Distribution

HBW, OPM, DPS, OCB

SPAR was the first customer to order the DPS 20 years ago. Here, stacker cranes take over the order-related staging of the storage totes in the pick front. Depending on the order structure, these are provided as needed in a static or dynamic manner. The SPAR employee working at ergonomically designed picking workstations picks the goods indicated by a pick-by-light system and places them into the provided customer tote. Additional scanning of the EAN code and an integrated weight check eliminate picking errors. The conveyor system transports the full totes to an Order Consolidation Buffer (OCB), which is responsible for sorting according to customer, store, and tour. “Just-in-time” for delivery, the totes are then removed from the OCB, stacked, palletized, and transported to the dispatch area. The old figures: Wholesale units per day: 67,000, 7,000 items and shift operation for some 1,500 SPAR stores that always need to be supplied without missing items and with a high service level - this is the philosophy of SPAR. Today, SPAR is able to handle 200,000 wholesale units on an average day and even 300,000 wholesale units on a peak day - thanks to the customers, but also thanks to the OPM (Order Picking Machinery) - the fully automated storage and picking system that went into operation in 2016. “We now have a semi- and fully-automated central warehouse for a large amount of dry goods”, explains Thallinger. Some 4,000 items, especially large-volume products of the central warehouse, were moved from the DPS tote warehouse to the new OPM warehouse sector and picked by eight COM machines onto roll containers in a store-friendly and error-free manner - including the top item 2017: CapriSun - Orange. What is special: Once the order has been received, the systems calculates the position of the items on the roll container based on the size and weight of the packaging unit, and then arranges them according to a perfect stacking pattern with as few gaps as possible. The OPM system also consolidates totes with customer orders that have already been picked in the DPS and large-volume cases for the same customer onto a roll container. This optimization and exact stacking process allows the shipment of more products on roll containers. This means up to 66,000 additional dispatch units picked daily by the OPM system in the third construction stage of the central warehouse in Wels and which are supplied to currently some 1,600 SPAR stores of different sizes throughout Austria and to some neighboring countries. Based on the new storage logic of the goods in the new and old warehouse area (large-volume items are now stored in the new construction area), the filling degree per tote in these storage areas can be significantly increased (1998: 3.8 wholesale units today: 6.2 wholesale units). The outbound rate in this area is increased by an additional 20 percent.

We now have the right storage and picking area for each item with its individual characteristic and supply quantity. WITRON is the “Lego” system of intra-logistics. All components, whether old or new, can be easily connected with the conveyor system, and yet each part is autonomous and designed for a specific purpose.