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Tag: cimcorp

Grocery Retail Giants Rely on Automation

Posted on by David Priestman

Cimcorp is a pioneer in intralogistics solutions, simplifying material flows and improving customers’ profitability by offering innovative and efficient solutions for automation. The company’s high-level technical skills combined with software know-how have created a unique formula for success in grocery retail automation. Through its automated logistics systems, Cimcorp provides its customers with the freedom to focus on their core business and offers them peace of mind.

From field to store within 24 hours

Freshness is a paramount consumer requirement that poses challenges for grocery logistics. With Cimcorp’s solution, grocery retailers have been able to dramatically reduce logistics delivery times from field to store.

“The grocery industry is extremely competitive, as shoppers change consuming habits fast and change stores even faster,” says Kari Miikkulainen, Director of Warehouse & Distribution Industry Sales at Cimcorp. “Today, stores offering the freshest, most seasonal produce win. Our job is to help industry players provide their shoppers with more high-quality fresh produce in less time.”

Optimizing intralogistics can, at its best, halve the time taken for produce to travel from field to store. For example, Cimcorp’s intralogistics solution has revolutionized the order-fulfillment process of the Spanish supermarket giant, Mercadona, enabling the delivery of fresh and seasonal produce to stores within 24 hours. By reducing lead times and optimizing order flows, Mercadona has extended shelf life for its perishable goods, reduced food waste and enhanced the overall customer experience.

Quality is another key criterion for consumers when shopping for groceries. In order picking, speed and precision are decisive for product quality, considering that there is typically a wide assortment of fresh produce articles. Boasting the largest range of groceries in the discount segment, German food retailer, Netto Marken-Discount also automated its fresh produce logistics with Cimcorp.

Fresh produce has a limited shelf life and the longer it takes to get to the store, the greater the chance that it will spoil or lose its nutritional value. With Cimcorp’s automation expertise, Edeka Freienbrink – part of the largest German supermarket chain, Edeka Group – delivers fresh produce to its stores within 4-5 hours of receiving orders.

Securing employee safety and wellbeing

Automation can also alleviate ergonomic and labour issues, enabling operations to run in a faster and safer way. As labour availability continues to be a major challenge, employees in manual warehouses need to work harder and faster to fulfill orders accurately and on time. This poses significant ergonomic hazards and risk of injury.

“The order-fulfillment process is automated; we trust our robots with the heavy lifting,” says Miikkulainen. “Trusting automation maximizes the center’s output capacity, increasing the quality and productivity of the staff at work. This collaborative, human-robotics knowledge ensures that everything inside the four walls of the distribution center is optimized, and no orders are ever late.”

At Edeka Freienbrink, the Cimcorp system takes care of the heavy lifting and physical work, allowing Edeka to rely on fewer people at the facility and making it easier to manage. Automation leads to a more pleasant work environment, allowing employees to focus on problem solving and critical thinking.

Mercadona’s approach to the benefits of automation is very employee-centric. The accuracy and quality of picked pallets, as well as shortened lead times, are always reflected through the effect on people. Securing employee safety and avoiding excessive workload are top priorities for the Spanish grocer.

Towards more eco-friendly supply chains

Automation and strategically planned intralogistics can enable businesses to become greener. As a pioneer in intralogistics solutions for grocery retail, Cimcorp is a partner that puts sustainability, social responsibility and governance plans into action. An inventory and supply system that flows smoothly encourages long-term resilience and complies with future requirements for transparency and sustainability, while also reducing carbon footprint and fresh-produce wastage.

In addition to successfully accelerating the intralogistics of customers around the world, Cimcorp has helped many grocers to utilize reusable plastic crates (RPCs). RPCs can help to minimize environmental impact beyond food waste. RPCs can be used thousands of times, replacing cardboard boxes as the method of transport for fresh produce from the farm to the store shelf. For example, Cimcorp has helped Mercadona to match automation and RPCs for excellent results.

Cimcorp’s Warehouse Control System (WCS) helps organize intralogistics and streamline the overall supply chain in a more sustainable way. Through optimizing the loading of delivery vehicles, customers can utilize their vehicle space more efficiently, which leads to fuller trucks and therefore fewer trucks. This means driving fewer kilometers on the road, reducing both CO2 emissions and pollution from exhaust fumes.

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Cimcorp to Automate Fresh Food Distribution for Spain’s Mercadona

 

Edeka and Cimcorp: Future of Fresh Food Distribution

Posted on by David Priestman

Part of Edeka Group, the largest German supermarket chain, Edeka Freienbrink is on a mission to distribute fresh food to its 488 stores around Berlin and Brandenburg quickly and efficiently. The goal is to deliver fresh produce to the stores within 4-5 hours of receiving the order, and Edeka is relying on the automation expertise of Cimcorp Group to achieve this. Edeka Freienbrink is one of five Edeka distribution centres Cimcorp has been modernizing with intralogistics automation designed for fresh food handling.

Mission to deliver fresh and fast

Order data is received at the Freienbrink DC around 11:30 a.m. and picking starts in the system at 12:00 p.m. The drivers arrive an hour later and wait for the goods to be loaded into their vehicles. They usually deliver the produce to the stores in Berlin first, and the goal is to have the goods in the stores by 8:00 a.m. the next morning.

“From Freienbrink’s distribution centre, we serve a total of 488 stores, 416 of which have their fruit and vegetables handled by the Cimcorp solution,” explains Rene Klaus (pictured), Operations Manager at Edeka Minden-Hannover.

Getting fresh food delivered as quickly as possible from field to store is of paramount importance for ensuring its quality and safety. Fresh produce has a limited shelf life and the longer it takes to get to the store, the greater the chance that it will spoil or lose its nutritional value.

“The system has to run – we are very time-bound and any delay in the process could mean that we could not supply our customers with the quantity that they would like to have, and that cannot happen,” Rene Klaus continues.

With Cimcorp’s automation expertise, Edeka experiences fast and efficient deliveries of fresh produce without picking errors or delays.

Safer and healthier work

The system takes care of the heavy lifting and physical work, allowing Edeka to rely on fewer people at the facility and making it easier to manage.

“The picking must be done on time,” says Rene Klaus. “We work from Sunday to Friday. The produce always leaves in the afternoon. In terms of personnel, it means finding people to work weekends and holidays. These positions are becoming harder to fill.”

By taking over monotonous, repetitive and physically demanding tasks, automation can reduce the risk of injuries caused by manual labor. Overall, automation leads to a safer, healthier and more comfortable work environment for employees at Edeka Freienbrink, allowing them to focus on tasks that require problem solving and critical thinking.

Automation is the future

As the demand for faster and more efficient distribution of fresh food continues to grow, the Edeka Freienbrink DC is looking to increase automation. Rene Klaus predicts that all heavy lifting and physically exhausting work will be done by machines in the future, with people needed to handle the control.

“We have a vast quantity and range of products that we need to handle as fast as possible. The Cimcorp system is extremely helpful in moving, distributing and locating them. Automation is definitely the future,” he explains.

Automation in the distribution centre is crucial to meet the demands of Edeka’s customers and ensure that they receive fresh produce quickly and efficiently. As Edeka Freienbrink looks to increase its automation, Cimcorp’s expertise will continue to play a vital role in helping the company meet these demands.

Keeping Bakery Distribution Fresh

Posted on by David Priestman

Cimcorp helped Kwik Trip automate order fulfilment in its new baking facility with a rapid, scalable solution designed to meet rising demand and guarantee freshness for its bakery products sold at over 700 locations daily.

In order to meet the growing demand for its bakery products and stock its stores throughout the Midwest, Kwik Trip made plans in 2017 to open a brand-new, 200,000-square-foot baking facility in La Crosse, Wisconsin, which would be dedicated to producing bread and buns across three simultaneous lines.

The new facility would need to come online and get up to speed in concert with the repurposing of the previous one – and ultimately produce and distribute four times the volume of output. To meet these requirements, the logical choice was to automate as much as possible and design a state-of-the-art facility where advanced systems would handle the majority of production, packaging, warehousing, and outbound distribution in a well-orchestrated, integrated fashion.

Opened in the fall of 2018, the La Crosse baking facility produces and distributes 19 types of bread and buns. On the production side, Kwik Trip has been able to automate everything from raw ingredient mixing down to the sprinkling of seeds on buns. Managing these automated operations are Kwik Trip’s plant operators, who have full visibility and control over the processes via touchscreen monitors.

From production, finished products are then sent to the packaging department, where different automated systems take care of bread slicing, bagging and bag tying. Once these goods are packaged, they enter one of the most critical points in the end-to-end process – the warehouse.

The La Crosse baking facility includes an 87,000-square-foot warehouse that covers more than one-third of the building’s footprint. When choosing a system to automate product storage and retrieval within the warehouse, Kwik Trip turned to Cimcorp, having heard of its experience and expertise in automating order fulfilment within the bakery industry.

“Cimcorp’s automation is central to enabling this efficient product movement and is therefore pivotal to our bakery business. Cimcorp worked closely with us to develop an ideal solution that would make optimal use of our warehouse space and meet our present and future business needs.” Eric Fonstad, Facility Director, Kwik Trip

Working closely with Kwik Trip, Cimcorp designed an ideal layout and custom automated solution based on the facility’s expected throughput and business needs. Namely, Cimcorp determined high-density storage would enable the optimal use of storage space for Kwik Trip’s fast-moving inventory with bagged products stored in around 80,000 plastic trays stacked up to 20 high across the warehouse floor.

Order picking is managed by Cimcorp’s MultiPick system that features six overhead gantry robots inside three cells that can rapidly receive products in trays, place them onto a stack and assemble the required product quantities per order. Kwik Trip also uses a “pick-by-light” system for picking less-than-full trays in outbound orders. The Warehouse Control Software (WCS) controls and directs the MultiPick to pick the orders based on store and route. Such computer control helps Kwik Trip ensure that orders are picked with 100-percent accuracy before being sent for dispatch.

The automated warehousing solution allows Kwik Trip to effectively manage all 80,000 trays and keep up with the fast-paced nature of its growing bakery business, where inventory is held no more than 48 hours before being sent to all stores.

Cimcorp developed Kwik Trip’s system to meet the company’s five-year growth plan, with the ability to receive all daily production from both the bread and bun lines, as well as process orders for 53,000 outbound trays in 20 hours. Since the MultiPick is a modular system, Kwik Trip can scale its levels of automation based on production output and consumer demand.

Whereas Kwik Trip’s previous facilities required manual picking, automated handling has eliminated that need – and the ergonomic risks for warehouse workers that come with it. For additional safety measures, the picking area is completely fenced off with built-in safeguards. Cimcorp’s WCS ensures a true first-in-first-out (FIFO) model, and complete product traceability. Moreover, the system allows Kwik Trip to manage a surge capacity that manual picking couldn’t.

Ultimately, Kwik Trip has enhanced productivity and efficiency with fully integrated automation between its manufacturing, packaging, warehousing and distribution processes. This has presented not only an operational benefit, but also a customer satisfaction one, where stores are well-stocked each day with only the best and freshest bakery products that the company has to offer.

Cimcorp Delivers Robotic Order Picking for US Warehouse Facility

Posted on by David Priestman

Cimcorp, a manufacturer and integrator of turnkey robotic order fulfillment and tire-handling solutions, announces it has helped Midwest convenience store chain Kwik Trip automate product handling and order fulfillment in its La Crosse, Wisconsin baking facility’s warehouse. Within the 87,000-square-foot warehouse, Cimcorp designed a space-saving, high-density layout and custom automated solution centered around its MultiPick robotic order picking system. The solution is able to rapidly manage 80,000 trays of fast-moving bakery products and process orders for 53,000 outbound trays to over 700 Kwik Trip stores each day.

The warehouse is part of a 200,000-square-foot baking facility opened by Kwik Trip in the fall of 2018 in response to growing demand for its self-produced baked goods—namely bread and buns. With the goal of producing and distributing four times the volume of output of its previous baking facility, Kwik Trip wanted to automate as much of its operations as possible. Today, the state-of-the art facility features various automated systems that handle the majority of production, packaging, warehousing and outbound distribution in a well-orchestrated, fully integrated fashion.

Eric Fonstad, Facility Director – Bread/Bun Plant, Kwik Trip, said, “The warehouse is one of the most critical points in the La Crosse facility’s end-to-end process, as the bread and buns that come in from production and packaging are held for no more than 48 hours before being sent to our stores. From receiving to storage, through picking and dispatch—these products have to flow seamlessly and quickly to guarantee their maximum freshness for our customers. Cimcorp’s automation is central to enabling this efficient product movement and is therefore pivotal to our bakery business. Cimcorp worked closely with us to develop an ideal solution that would make optimal use of our warehouse space and meet our present and future business needs.”

Notably, when orders come in from Kwik Trip’s stores, the data is transferred to Cimcorp’s Warehouse Control System (WCS), which then controls and directs the MultiPick to pick the orders based on store and route. The MultiPick operates from overhead and retrieves the required trays of products from stacks up to 20 high across the warehouse floor. Computer control ensures that the orders are picked with 100-percent accuracy and that Kwik Trip follows a first-in-first-out (FIFO) inventory management model. By automating, Kwik Trip has also eliminated the ergonomic risks of manual handling—enhancing workplace safety for all warehouse employees—and improved its surge capacity.

Derek Rickard, Director of Sales, Cimcorp, said, “Surges are a common challenge in bakery distribution—where warehouse managers and employees must keep products efficiently moving out the door amid spikes in order volume. These are often seen seasonally but can also occur due to other external market factors. For instance, at the onset of COVID-19, Kwik Trip saw demand nearly triple in a single week. But thanks to the rapid handling and adaptability of our MultiPick system, the La Crosse facility was able to maintain the same product flow and level of order accuracy as its normal daily operation. From the beginning, it was important that our solution offer such flexibility, as well as scalability, to meet Kwik Trip’s warehousing needs as the company sets its sights on continued growth ahead.”

Earlier this year Cimcorp announced they were working with Spanish grocery retailer, Alimerka to automate the distribution of fresh produce.

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