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Warehouse Automation Choice

Posted on by Paul Hamblin

Intralogistics customers partnering with Beumer, a provider of warehouse automation technology, can expect step-change improvement in processes. The wins include space, time and cost efficiencies, with better tracking and security as a bonus. Paul Hamblin meets the team.

For Beumer Group, successful business relationships are about partnership. The company bills itself as the ‘Partner of Choice’, validated by the continuing success of the company’s proven technologies, and delivery on the promises made to its partners.

Gregor Baumeister, Director, Warehousing and Distribution Logistics Systems, tells me he was very happy with the company’s LogiMAT this year, describing “concrete project discussions with budgets and timelines” as part of an overall positive sentiment throughout the halls. This perhaps contrasts with ProMat a week later, where his American colleagues described a more cautious and uncertain atmosphere, no doubt due in no small part to the blizzard of tariff announcements and amendments from the Trump administration in the first part of 2025.

End-to-end Automation Provision

At LogiMAT 2024, Beumer focused on ‘Lights Out’ warehouse technology; this year the company highlighted its capabilities in the delivery of end-to-end automation in DCs.

For Gregor Baumeister (pictured below), the argument that automation represents a damaging replacement of human labour is bogus. “The world talks a lot about automation reducing labour opportunities, but I think it’s more accurate to say that our customers are unable to source that labour any longer simply because it is no longer available. So, in reality, the drive towards higher levels of automation is more accurately an enabler to stay in business. That’s the key difference. And with our systems you can create a fully automatic line of warehouse processes.”

Gregor Baumeister, Beumer

He outlines the Beumer product offering. “If you look at the processes in a DC, typically you’ve got goods receiving, then storage facilities, and retrieval via a shuttle or cube system basically bringing products to people,” he explains. “Beumer starts at the point of bringing those goods to people, then we go downstream from there, either in a pouch system or via a loop or line sortation system, including packaging and shipping to customers.”

The company demonstrated full automation of this process in Stuttgart. A significant advance is the automatic unloadable pouch, with which Beumer provides customers – should they choose to do so – with the facility to remove another layer of human interaction on a product’s journey to the end consumer. “Customer partners have the option of feeding a pouch system either via an operator placed at an ergonomic workstation or by using a robot. We will collaborate with customers to provide them with the most appropriate choice for their needs,” he reports. “The pouch system does its magic and the product can then be directly packaged by machine. If it needs special packaging – stretch-wrapping for high-value goods perhaps – this too is possible. All preferences are at the behest of the customer partner.”

Typically, pouch technology is tailored to smaller items in the 550mm x 420mm x 280mm dimensional category. “You can handle these items very effectively in a pouch,” he continues. “Our system handles items up to 7kg each, which is 40% more than other systems can do, and is particularly popular in fashion and general e-commerce settings. In those categories, 70-80% of parcels or bags are that size. Pouch technology is also developing a growing reputation in what we call ‘e-pharma’ handling.”

He points out further space-exploitation benefits of pouch technology. “By hanging the pouch system from the roof, we can use the third dimension in the warehouse. It is super space-efficient, with very high dynamic pick rates and order fulfilment rates. It’s very efficient overall in terms of space, labour, time, and also in tracking and traceability, because every pouch has a ‘licence plate’, making the whole process fully transparent.”

Stretch Hood Security Technology

Another eye-catching security innovation from the company this year is the Beumer stretch hood, which helps to secure pallets. Gregor Baumeister illustrates: “Consider a pallet delivery to shops and stores containing small, high-value goods: a good example might be razor blades. This is what the stretch hood is for – an enclosed hood made of film which can be pulled down and over the goods snugly. Anyone looking to pilfer goods from the pallet would need to tamper with the film to extract anything and this would be very evident in the breakage of the film. While it’s possible to reach inside an unprotected rack pallet to take out a product, it can’t be done with a stretch hood attached. A rack pallet you can always reach in, but with a stretch hood you cannot. In addition, it also provides protection from the elements.”

Learning from Data

Beumer’s advanced data analytics capabilities enable customers to further exploit the full capability of automation technology.

“Data analytics enables the recognition of patterns, thus facilitating predictive maintenance,” he explains. “But it also performs valuable service in steering operational processes, so that we can proactively advise customers of upcoming situations. In modern business, it’s important to see as far and as early as possible. Our customer diagnostic centres help monitor and manage facilities, offering operational advice if the customer wishes us to do so.”

Beumer’s tools enable the flexibility so essential to today’s logistics needs. “You don’t know what’s coming round the corner,” Baumeister cautions. “You need to avoid roadblocks if you want to stay in business.”

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Successful Year for Witron Group

Posted on by David Priestman

The WITRON Group can reflect on another successful business year for 2024. Sales increased by 100 million EUR to 1.4 billion EUR. The company also hired 500 additional staff members, which means that 7,500 people are currently employed by the family enterprise. Another positive development is that 89 young people have decided to start their apprenticeship at WITRON.

Successfully ramped up projects as well as new orders for the design, implementation, and service of highly dynamic food, near-food, and non-food distribution centers for retail customers in Europe, North America, and Australia complement the business year and also allow for a positive outlook.

“Even if investment decisions are sometimes delayed due to the current geopolitical conditions, we should look positively to the future based on our successful company history”, emphasizes WITRON founder and owner Walter Winkler. “The decisive factor will be to optimally cope with the existing conditions. Consequently, this means focusing on the things that we can actively influence: Namely, to design and implement logistics facilities for our customers that are cost-efficient and to underpin our global reputation for delivering premium quality. Then, we will be rewarded with orders even in challenging times.”

New orders from well-known food retailers

The order book shows that this credo is proving true. Although, the number of orders received is slightly below the record figure achieved in the 2023 business year, it is still very satisfying. Contracts signed with well-known food retailers in WITRON’s core markets of Europe, North America, and Australia, have strengthened the reputation of the OPM / COM system as the world’s most successful fully automated storage and picking system for retail units in the food retail sector. The trust placed in WITRON by the food retail industry was based on numerous projects in the dry goods sector (43 percent) and in the perishable / frozen goods area (57 percent) for customers in Germany, Benelux, Scandinavia, North America, and Australia, which were implemented on time and within budget. These include the almost 103,000 square meter omni-channel facility for Swedish food retailer Axfood, which reached full functionality shortly before the 2024 Christmas season and will supply more than 1,500 stores and thousands of click + collect / HomeDelivery customers daily from a wide range of 22,000+ different products. These products are stored in a temperature range of plus 18 degrees Celsius to minus 26 degrees Celsius. On a peak day, the OPM, CPS, AIO, DPS, and OPS modules pick almost 1.6 million units. In addition, a fully automated shipping buffer optimizes the entire dispatch process – all controlled by an intelligent WITRON warehouse management system.

The dry goods logistics center of food retailer Coles in Redbank (Brisbane) implemented by WITRON has even won the prestigious ASCLA Award (Supply Chain and Logistics Association of Australia) in the “Automation, Robotics or Emerging Technology” category. The decisive factor for the 16 judges was the high level of efficiency in the entire supply chain, cost-effectiveness, product availability, occupational safety, and sustainability of what is currently probably the most efficient distribution center of the southern hemisphere.

Based on the success of the Redbank facility, WITRON has successfully ramped up another highly automated distribution centre for Coles in Kemps Creek (Sydney). The state-of-the-art site matches the scope and functionality of the facility in Redbank and also impressively underlines the strength of a joint trusting cooperation. And the partnership will be further intensified in the future. At the end of October 2024, Coles awarded WITRON with the design and implementation of another automated logistics center near Melbourne – with the aim of further optimizing the supply chains based on innovative WITRON logistics technology.

Service continues to grow

WITRON Group’s service business was also further expanded. This is reflected in the integration of eight new OnSite service teams in our customers’ logistics centres. A total of 67 OnSite teams with 4,400 staff members in 12 countries is currently ensuring a permanently high availability of all material flow, IT, and mechanical components.

In the future, their work will be further optimized by an innovation called ‘one device’, allowing service technicians central access to all WITRON service tools via a SmartPhone. As a result, active and proactive maintenance work can be organized even more efficiently. This innovation fits perfectly into “WITRON’s interface offensive”, where workstation dialogs are individually adapted to the requirements of the respective workers in order to ensure maximum usability / UX.

In-house platform production

The company’s product range was expanded in 2024 with the in-house platform production in modular construction. In the future, these platforms will be manufactured in-house in the production facilities of WITRON Stahlfertiger GmbH + Co. KG located in Waidhaus, Germany. Based on end-to-end processes and state-of-the-art operating equipment, all work steps – from design to statics calculation – can be carried out largely without third-party suppliers. The first ‘WITRON platforms’ have already been installed for various US customers.

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Successful Change Management in Logistics Automation

Posted on by David Priestman

When the new distribution centre is up and running, the ramp-up was successful, and the first items are picked onto pallets or roll containers with the help of highly dynamic COM machines, then the ‘Grand Opening’ is celebrated, everyone involved congratulates each other, and there is a festive atmosphere. Automation works and the days of manual warehouse logistics are a thing of the past.

“In principle, we build a highly automated production facility for and with our customers,” explains Johannes Meißner (pictured below, top picture), Technical Managing Director at WITRON, who has been working in various positions at the company for more than three decades. Customers who have a strong background in manual logistics processes are particularly impressed when they visit the first reference customers. “We transform entire work processes, which is why we need a working change management system for the customer in every phase – design, build, and operate – and that we help to develop right from the start.” Meißner and his colleagues from sales and logistics design have already guided numerous new customers through existing facilities realized by WITRON worldwide. “That’s how a project usually starts,” he explains.

Change management begins with detailed analysis

Double-digit efficiency gains thanks to end-to-end automation from receiving to shipping require new processes. The cooperation with suppliers is changing, transport volumes need to be adapted, master data is gaining importance, packaging designs are becoming more important, employees are being given new areas of responsibility and need different qualifications, stores have to be involved, perhaps even the end customer as an e-commerce purchaser. “We do not only supply software, conveyor technology, and machines – we also support the customer in detail as part of the change management, and even take over the service or the complete system operation if so required. We start by analyzing the products, the internal and external material flow, the vertical and horizontal supply chain in detail, creating transparency for the customer and for us. Together, we define new packaging standards, review master data, and provide support in communicating with suppliers who also have to benefit from this process. We help train logistics employees, explain processes, and provide communication support.”

One example of a successful change process with a supplier is the project for a French food retail customer where the Flow Picking Machinery (FPM) has been implemented for the first time in the fresh food sector. It uses OPM technology but works without stock and builds store-friendly pallets just-in-time for customers. A key factor in the system’s efficiency is the structure of the inbound pallets. “In our case, 45 percent were full pallets or single-item layer pallets, which we can depalletize automatically very well. These are added by uniform case pallets, which are pallets with one type of standard carton boxes or totes containing different items that can also be depalletized automatically. This already gives us an automatic depalletizing rate of almost 65 percent without making any major adjustments. But the goal was more than 80 percent,” remembers Meißner. How can this be achieved? Change and communication. The WITRON logistics experts have defined a strategy with the customer to increase the ratio of uniform case pallets in cooperation with the suppliers, and, at the same time, to reorder complete layer units of fast-moving items from the supplier in the future. “That is a win-win outcome for the retailer and the supplier, as it significantly simplifies the supplier’s logistics,“ says Johannes Meißner happily.

The topic of IT is closely linked to the suppliers. “We build intelligent interfaces to their systems and can also quickly connect to the customers’ or their system providers’ systems in order to use our WITRON WMS Suite. At the same time, we have invested a lot in the UX of our systems in recent months. When employees learn the systems more quickly because operation has become simpler or more intuitive, this has positive impact on process stability, efficiency, and transparency in the warehouse.”

Communication and transparency are crucial

Transparency is a good keyword. Another example of successful change communication is an innovative omni-channel logistics center in Switzerland. In recent years, Migros Verteilbetrieb AG (MVB) in Neuendorf has also increasingly relied on automation in the non-food sector. “Everything used to be manual here – spread over five floors. That is hard to imagine today,” says Alexander Schweizer, Head of Engineering and IT, Migros Verteilbetrieb AG. The main building, which houses the near- and non-food area, supplies more than 700 stores and many thousands of home shopping customers from a range of 100,000+ items per year. On a peak day, WITRON’s OPM, AIO, CPS systems pick more than 470,000 cases. And there were initially concerns among the employees. “Yes, there are concerns because the workers’ tasks will change significantly,” explained the department responsible for the change process openly during one of the first visits at the start of the project. “We take these worries seriously, talk to our colleagues, inform them about the progress of the construction site, about new tasks, and further training opportunities.” An employee app keeps staff constantly informed about developments, while large screens at the entrances visualize future tasks. People play a key role in the logistics processes. Those responsible at Migros Verteilbetrieb in Neuendorf quickly recognized this and professionalized the change management. But also the management board was expected to answer questions.

Enabling intensive exchange with reference customers

“It’s not enough to distribute glossy flyers about the new automated logistics centre. The Swiss did this very well throughout the entire project,” explains Meißner. In his view, it also requires a mind shift on the part of both management and employees in the distribution center. That they will no longer work in a manual warehouse in the future but will be an important part of a high-performance production facility. “Both need to be sensitized. And this starts from the very first visits when the customers are in Parkstein. “In addition, as part of reference visits and workshops, we enable our customers to engage in intensive discussions with the logistics and service managers responsible for the systems we have implemented. Even across national borders and continents. Customers also have a responsibility to change, we support them through all project phases, show them the efficiency gains, but if there is a lack of willingness, then the project won’t be a success and we cancel such deals,” explains Meißner, who gets on a plane after the interview to participate in the opening ceremony of the new Coles logistics center in Australia. It is already the second distribution center that Coles has implemented with WITRON as a lifetime partner. Coles also used to work with conventional warehouses.

Three dimensions as the basis for successful change

However, it is not only in Europe and Australia that customers have understood how a successful change process is handled and the opportunities it brings. Karl Högen (pictured above, bottom picture) has been responsible for the North American business as CEO for many years and knows: “Training is very important. We want a commitment to the system. Customers invest a lot of money and rightly so,” emphasizes the CEO. “After more than 100 realized projects with food retailers, we often know this sector “end-to-end” in detail better than our customers. It is therefore also up to WITRON to show customers weak points in change management.” Karl Högen refers to three dimensions:

1. The technology – both the mechanics and the IT – where customers benefit from WITRON’s extensive design, realization, service, and operating experience as a lifetime partner with overall responsibility.

2. The people in the logistics facilities, but also in the stores who need to be informed and trained.

3. The processes related to suppliers, for example, when it comes to packaging and products.

Högen reflects on projects in the USA: “After the project was completed, there were still five aisles with products that could only be picked manually. Following various discussions with the suppliers, these items could also be fully integrated into the automated process.”

Taking along the people in the distribution centres

The people are the decisive factor for Högen. “There is a global lack of skilled workers and new technologies are helping to compensate for this, but we also have to take people along with us. We have to make it easier for them to no longer have to lift and carry between 12 and 16 tons of goods a day in the dry, fresh, and frozen food areas and communicate that change is also necessary.” New working environments are replacing traditional work areas. Manual picking processes take a back seat or are replaced by service, management, and controlling tasks. And WITRON also had to change, Högen supports Meißner’s statements about new user interfaces. “We are trying to reduce complexity, for example, through better user interfaces, but automation is still more demanding than manual systems,” he explains. Only recently, completely new user interfaces were rolled out for a US customer. “We listen carefully to where the weak points are, where we can improve processes so that automation brings efficiency gains and is enjoyable,” Högen laughs. Or as one of his North American customers used to say: “Our highly automated logistics center is a game changer- in terms of store service, transport costs, and leading-edge jobs for employees.”

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Easier to do Materials Handling Projects

Posted on by David Priestman

Repeat custom now accounts for almost two-thirds of the Beumer Group’s business. That’s why the motto of the company’s appearance at LogiMAT was ‘Easy to do business with’. David Priestman reports.

BEUMER Group is a large organisation operating on a global scale, with locations in more than 50 countries, but is determined to avoid organisational complexities and local variations in quality and service. The goal is to always offer the best possible service or product, and the motto of being ‘easy to do business with’ encompasses everything from allocating customers a consistent point of contact from project start to completion to providing data insights via its Customer Diagnostic Centre that enable customers to make better operational and investment decisions.

Brian Hansen (pictured below), Systems and Proposals Director, says: “We talk openly to customers and potential customers and we want to be approachable. Choices are more complicated now. We prefer to discuss products and solutions later down the line after talking through their challenges and requirements.” The company says it recognises the challenges and uncertainties that customers and partners face and does what it can to mitigate them, for example by simplifying the organisational structure and communications. This includes encouraging customers to call the mobile phones of their Beumer contact, at any time.

“If a customer wants to increase optimisation in the warehouse the system will run for 15 or 20 years,” adds Hansen, “so they need to live with it. Brand loyalty and repeat business are fostered by providing the best customer experience and trust, not at the lowest cost.” According to Beumer, it is often the small details that make the biggest difference. For example, one international CEP customer recently benefited from the fact that Beumer does not use internally generated codes on their technical drawings: they are labelled clearly and descriptively to avoid any confusion.
“As a designer, I look at sustainability,” Hansen tells me. “Long term projects that last and work are an inherent good.” Is this ease of doing business good for retaining customers are obtaining new ones? “It’s hard to tell customers to switch materials handling supplier, but we believe in the invite, to give it a try. We don’t know everything but we can find the next steps with customers.”

Dark warehouses?

Despite its global presence, Beumer is still a family-owned business. From the outset, customers are assigned a consistent point of contact so they develop a personal relationship with someone who has the relevant experience and understanding of their business and challenges. This same contact is present during system installation for total continuity.

Brian Hansen

The ’customer first’ philosophy is also evident in the way Beumer conducts itself on site. The way its materials handling systems are packaged and delivered is organised meticulously to minimise the time spent on unpacking and assembly. In addition, all waste is removed from site for recycling or disposal once the installation is completed. The company also prides itself on never letting a customer down: they do not leave the site until the job is finished.

Gregor Baumeister is the Director of Warehousing and Distribution. He says that as AI and robotics advance we are moving towards full automation in the DC. “Market uncertainty and the restriction on brownfield developments means customers must use and maximise the existing space. Unused headroom requires 3D handling systems. We’re not talking about making people redundant,” he asserts, “we’re mitigating risks for customers as they cannot find staff due to demographic ageing.” Goods to person is key in new systems, along with pouch sorting and robotic picking. “Retail verses ecommerce picking in a DC are vastly different quantities,” he points out. “Technology can therefore provide certainty in throughput, for example with a 2 step batch pick-up.”

Diagnostics and maintenance

Providing customers with certainty extends into maintenance and obsolescence management. Beumer offers a minimum of 15 years parts support, simplifying maintenance and giving customers confidence that their material handling system will perform reliably with minimal downtime over its lifetime. Indeed, such is the quality of some automated solutions that they are still maintaining and updating systems that are more than 25 years old.

Christian Buhrmann oversees the company’s customer diagnostic centre, which currently has 60 staff. ‘Improve, Prevent, Ensure’ is his motto in this venture. “We collect so much data,” Buhrmann acknowledges, “we must use it to empower customers. We’re system agnostic.” ‘Improve’ is about taking advantage of data analytics, enabling customers to gain efficiency. ‘Prevent’ is using diagnostic models and cyber security. “We do our utmost to stop problems and breakdowns,” Buhrmann states. ‘Ensure’? “When something goes wrong we utilise our best-in-class hotline to get operations running again. You can get straight through to a systems specialist, not a customer call centre,” he emphasises. That sounds easy.

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Sustainable Warehouse Automation Options

Posted on by David Priestman

Can warehouse automation advance sustainability? Dan Migliozzi, Head of Sales at independent systems integrator, Invar Group, looks at the options available.

Logistics and supply chain professionals are increasingly concerned about the sustainability of their operations, and in particular, about the environmental performance of their warehouses and DCs. What’s more, they have to be. Their customers are demanding ever greater and more demonstrable levels of sustainability.

This applies across the board, from how their facilities are constructed, to impacts on land use, hydrology and infrastructure requirements, transport movements generated, and of course how the facility itself is equipped and operated. As labour becomes scarcer, many businesses are considering automating warehouse processes. So, a big question for a growing number of companies is, can automation be used to advance sustainability within the warehouse?

Applied appropriately, higher levels of automation should lead to greater efficiency, less waste – including but not confined to fuel and energy – and therefore a more sustainable operation. In practice, things are not quite so clear-cut. Automation that is poorly thought out, mis-directed, inappropriately scaled, or implemented with substandard equipment, can impact both operational and environmental performance. However, a well-planned and implemented automation project can yield many sustainability benefits.

A big question is, should the automation be housed in an existing building, or is a new build designed around the requirements of automation a more sustainable solution?

A new build obviously generates a lot of carbon and uses other resources in its materials and construction. Also, a greenfield site will almost certainly impact the ‘natural’ environment, may influence drainage and groundwater and requires new infrastructure. But a new build can be designed to accommodate sustainability features such as solar panels, heat pumps, wind turbines, energy-conserving doorways, airlocks and insulation.

However, automation in an existing building may make better use of space, removing the need for physical expansion or any need to move. Exactly which option works best is a complex equation and depends on the long-term strategy of the business. Whether in a new build or refurbished premises, automation can create many other sustainability benefits beyond the walls of the shed. More accurate and timely order fulfilment can reduce the size of truck park required – fewer acres under concrete. And to the extent that headcount is reduced, that is fewer staff bringing in and parking private vehicles.

Automation can lend itself to, at least partial, ‘lights out’ operation, if appropriate, saving considerable cost and energy. Incorporating a sophisticated Building Management System which optimises the needs of manual and automated operation can yield real cost and sustainability benefits.

So, what are the sustainability issues to consider when selecting the technology? Sourcing/procurement is one area to take up with the vendor or integrator. Are machines and materials traceable to suppliers with acceptable records on their own sustainability? How much power is consumed per unit of output? Does the design of the automated system minimise the number of motors in use? Is the most energy efficient technology being considered? Could gravity be put to good use? Do control systems allow lower power consumption at times of light usage? What recharging facilities and procedures are used for Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) or other electric powered vehicles?

Unpowered elements also matter. Do conveyor components have the lowest coefficient of friction? This can make a huge difference – we know an installation where low friction belts saved 65% of power consumption which, given there were seven miles of conveyor, amounted to 20% of the consumption of the whole building.

Reputable integrators and vendors should supply reliable estimates of energy consumption, related to levels of usage as part of the bidding process. They should also detail their approach to SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) or other approaches to monitoring energy use as part of the control system for the automation. In use, this should be able to highlight areas where power consumption is high, perhaps pointing to a need for better equipment or different modes of operation.

This approach may also uncover areas where performance is deteriorating. Vendor equipment comes with detailed Preventative Maintenance schedules for good reason – it isn’t just a ploy to ramp up spare parts sales – which, incidentally, should always be authentic parts even if they are more costly. Without proper maintenance, performance will inevitably deteriorate, and sustainability will diminish, quite possibly ending with an expensive line stoppage.

Taken all together, the potential for automation to deliver real sustainability, as well as economic gains, is clearly evident.

Will Darkness Protect us from COVID-19?

Posted on by David Priestman

Sunlight was supposed to be the answer to COVID-19. However, fully automated warehouses that no longer need lighting or heating are helping to keep supply lines open during the pandemic. Here Neil Ballinger, head of EMEA sales at automation equipment supplier EU Automation, explains why retailers and distributors are investing heavily in fully automated distribution centres.

The COVID-19 pandemic has accentuated a divide between those companies that have embraced technology and those that have not. Retailers who had invested in automation and e-commerce fared better than their competitors. In 2020, the share price of Ocado, a British online supermarket, doubled while the share price of Marks and Spencer, a traditional high-street retailer, has halved. Clearly, in the eyes of investors the future of retail is online.

Behind the scenes of the race to online shopping, retailers and distributors are working hard to automate their warehouses and gear them towards new shopping behaviour. Amazon has emerged as one of the pioneers in logistics automation. The first generation of logistics professionals at Amazon had cut their teeth at Walmart. When they started working for Amazon, they quickly learned that shipping individual parcels directly to end customers required a different set of processes compared to shipping pallets of goods to stores.

Dark Warehouse

According to Brad Stone, the author of The Everything Store, Amazon executives realised that if they improved how orders were fulfilled, they could turn this into a competitive advantage. They invented a software to calculate the best way of combining the products in each individual order, factor in the address of the customer and ship it all in the least expensive way. Fast and cost-effective, picking, packing and shipping became a strategic advantage for Amazon.

The next frontier in warehouse automation is to seamlessly integrate the processes of sorting, picking and packing. Boxing-up parcels has traditionally been a very labour-intensive process. Last year, Amazon started to invest in packing machines built by CMC, an Italian automation specialist, which pack up to 700 boxes per hour. Automated packaging is currently booming. In Germany, Dm-Drogerie Markt, the country’s largest drugstore, has invested 100 million Euros into a new distribution centre. It contains state-of-the-art automation systems built by Swisslog, a Swiss logistics automation supplier. In the UK, The White Company, a clothing retailer, is planning to install a Quadient CVP Everest, also an automated packing machine, in August 2020.

Does a fully automated warehouse still need lighting? In a recent newsletter, Swisslog’s Paul Stringeman described the distribution centre of the future as follows: “no staff driving back and forth on forklift trucks, no load handlers examining products and picking items onto pallets, not even an electric light – just sky high racking, shuttles, lifts, robots, conveyors and autonomous vehicles choosing their own paths through the darkness”.

COVID-19 accelerated the use of technology in logistics. When a warehouse is fully automated, it no longer needs flickering neon tubes to keep running. Lights-out logistics is fast becoming a reality. http://www.euautomation.com/us/

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