New Logistics Hub For a Leading Food Retailer

Quality & Sustainability in Harmony

The Initial Situation
The food retailer needed a new central warehouse to supply the regional warehouses in the area with the dry goods line. The requirement was to create an efficient and sustainable logistics solution that could also handle seasonal business. The warehouse had to be scalable to accommodate future growth. Additionally, it should meet high standards of scheduling and cost reliability.

The Solution
After a construction period of only two and a half years, SSI SCHAEFER handed over the new central warehouse as a turnkey project. As the general planner and general contractor for construction and logistics, the long-standing intralogistics partner ensured precise coordination of trades even during the planning phase. Thanks to early commissioning, time and costs were saved. The scalable overall solution, covering 36,000 m² of floor space and partially extending vertically over three levels, includes 33,400 pallet spaces and 276,800 container spaces, as well as ergonomic workstations in goods receipt and order picking areas within the building complex. In this highly dynamic environment, the proprietary all-in-one logistics software WAMAS ensures efficient processes, and the SSI Resident Maintenance Service package guarantees a consistently high system availability.

Additionally, SSI SCHAEFER placed great emphasis on sustainability: A building envelope with photovoltaic system, LED lighting, and extensive green roofing, as well as an autonomous combined heat and power unit, was installed. Furthermore, ecologically sensible containers made from SSI SCHAEFER’s recycled granulate are used. The omission of lids simplifies handling in stores, and the foldable transport boxes save additional volume during the return of empties by truck.

An exact schedule was extremely important for the food retailer in order to be able to go live with the new central warehouse at the start of the Christmas business and thus be able to guarantee the security of supply for the branches. This was achieved primarily through the close integration of the two main functions:

Flexible WAREHOUSE TECHNOLOGY creates modern work stations

The integrated, customized overall solution includes a 10-aisle order picking high-bay warehouse with 18,000 pallet storage locations, where employees pick orders using software-guided roll containers. Additionally, there is a 9-aisle automatic high-bay warehouse (HRL) with 15,500 storage locations, serving as a buffer storage. For the picking of medium- and slow-moving items, SSI SCHAEFER has also installed a 12-aisle small parts warehouse (AKL) with over 200,000 container storage locations, served by SSI Miniload automated storage and retrieval machines. Furthermore, a 12-aisle SSI Cuby Shuttle system with 76,800 storage locations is in place.

About 1 km of pallet conveyor and 5.5 km of bin conveyor systems connect the automated storage systems, including 20 workstations in receiving and nine ergonomic, product-friendly, and health-conscious order picking workstations called Advanced Pick Stations, also guided by WAMAS. Order picking, followed by automatic palletization at the outbound area, is carried out according to the customer’s defined timeframes. WAMAS coordinates the processes accordingly at an early stage so that all orders can be processed properly and on time.