Zalando Lounge, the fashion and lifestyle online shopping club relies on software from Körber to control operations at its fulfilment centre in Olsztynek, northern Poland.
Körber is supporting Zalando Lounge’s further growth with a high-performance, automated system for advanced material flow control. The 130,000 sq m logistics centre took up operations in 2019 to cater to the success of Zalando’s steadily growing shopping club, the Zalando Lounge.
It is one of the most successful online shopping clubs in Europe, with more than 50 million members in 14 European markets. The site in Olsztynek is Zalando Lounge’s first international fulfilment centre.
Zalando and Körber previously introduced technically complex and demanding projects at sites in Łódź (Poland) and Nogarole Rocca (Italy). At each of these sites, Kӧrber successfully implemented its warehouse control system (WCS). These control a multitude of components, from shuttle systems to different types of sorters. Based on the success of these projects, Zalando Lounge needed a similar solution to control the two-stage sorting plant, which will sort more than 200,000 multi-item orders a day.
At the site in Poland, Kӧrber again integrated its WCS. This controls the item sorter system, the largest of its kind in Europe. The commissioning process takes place in two phases. In phase one, bulk order picking carried out according to batches. In phase two, the WCS uniquely controls the sorters performing individual order picking. This system effectively enables management of high-order volumes from a wide array of customers. As a result, the fulfilment centre can now handle the increasing number of orders from its steadily growing customer base.
In a second project at the same site, Körber integrated additional project-specific functions in the WCS. This includes inventory management in the narrow aisle store, achieving higher storage density, as well as automatic warehouse navigation to execute and control put away and retrieval of all forklift transports.
“Our experience from previous projects convinced us Körber is the right partner for our logistics centre in Olsztynek. We appreciate the co-operation with the Körber team, which supports us especially with its know-how with the increasing requirements for seamless interaction of logistics components,” says Sven Thiessen, Director Offprice Logistics for Zalando Lounge. The WCS allows us to process the steadily increasing number of orders to serve our customers with the expected high quality.”
Michael Brandl, CEO Software Europe and Middle East, Körber Business Area Supply Chain, comments: “There is no room for downtime in logistics installations, which is why customers worldwide rely on us to get it right. We at Körber draw from decades of experience in logistics projects. We focus on choosing the right solution from a consultation, customisation, integration, product and add-on point of view, adapted for the respective environment. This can be in terms of customising the solutions as well as using the right type of automation. Continued trust from organisations such as Zalando Lounge and the outlook of growing together as partners is what makes projects like this so rewarding.”
Itella Russia, one of the leading contract and transportation service providers in the Russian market, and PSI Logistics have successfully completed the development and implementation of the new multi-client capable software solution based on the Warehouse Management System PSIwms for the legal product labelling obligation in Russia.
Itella has been using PSIwms to implement all changes in technological and intralogistic processes for more than 20 years. The system controls the multi-client warehouses in the Moscow metropolitan area across all locations and allocates the goods receipts according to demand and also supports the automated warehouse management.
Operational management is supported by cockpits and dashboards that can be configured flexibly and intuitively with the PSI click design. The processes are largely controlled via barcodes, which form the basis for all further operations such as determining and allocating the storage location, selecting the load carriers, conveyor technology and transport devices as well as WLAN-based allocation of radio-controlled and route-optimised transport orders via the forklift guidance system in PSIwms.
The adaptive order start in PSIwms also supports Itella in the processing of e-commerce orders, taking into account all defined restrictions. Powerful fuzzy logic in the software balances numerous warehouse metrics according to configurable parameters to improve warehouse performance.
Itella Russia, a subsidiary of the Finnish Posti Group, employs round 2,000 people and has a warehouse area of about 200,000 sq m in the Moscow region, as well as branches in St. Petersburg, Rostov-on-Don, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Vladivostok and Novorossiysk. The customers are international and Russian companies from various industries.
The PSI Group develops its own software products for optimising the flow of energy and materials for utilities (energy grids, energy trading, public transport) and industry (metals production, automotive, mechanical engineering, logistics). PSI was founded in 1969 and employs more than 2,000 people worldwide.
Most of you will be familiar with the term “30,000 ft. view” when describing a business concept that looks through a wider lens at the bigger picture. This is usually where we want to begin when starting our research on a particular topic that we’re still learning about. However, after taking in that sweeping vista from your business-class window seat for a while, you’d like to get on the ground and see what you’ve been looking at in more detail. Andrey Kazachkov, Head of Warehouse Automation at premier custom software development provider First Line Software, helps us to do just that.
The view today will be from ground level looking at a few specific examples of WMS and the how’s and why’s of successful implementations, and some issues that could have been avoided in others. Hopefully by seeing what works and learning from what others should have done, you can get a better view regarding what’s needed to get your own Warehouse Management Solution off the ground.
Let’s begin with a couple of WMS integration mis-steps, and how they could have been avoided.
Losing Focus
Company X has a complex warehousing system where goods are continually moved from one storage facility to another. A technical brief was written up by Company X on how it wanted to implement automation for a more efficient flow of its goods within the system. As part of the brief, a simulation was created that (in-part) identified where their product was at various given points throughout the journey between the facilities.
It should be noted here that creating virtual simulations that actually prove how existing hardware, new equipment, and software can work together with a relatively high degree of accuracy is extremely complex and time-consuming. The simple term for any realistic simulation is: Very Expensive. However, it’s very useful as it’s far cheaper than buying and putting all of the actual hardware and software together and finding out your multi-million-euro investment does not work as it’s supposed to.
Here, Company X did the right thing and created the model. But, as the entire technical brief was reviewed by the vendors implementing the project, it became clear the model was not realistic for executing in the real world. The simulation was based not on what was possible for goods movement within the warehouse system, but what was desired. The desired process should have been tried manually several times to see if it was viable before spending time and money running a costly simulation in the technical brief. As the saying goes, “To properly landscape a garden, you must first walk the garden – only then, can you lay a path”.
Company Y is an international organisation that has warehouses in Europe and North America.
An automated WMS was already implemented and up and running in Europe. Company Y wanted to duplicate that successful warehouse in North America. It was thought that much of the development costs have already been absorbed in Europe, and that a “cut-and-paste” approach might save money when applying it to the warehouse being updated in North America.
This strategy would prove somewhat costly, as the WMS integration in North America should have been treated as an entirely separate project from Europe (or any other location for that matter). The majority of the technical brief was carried over to the West from the East and much of the development process was assumed to be relatively simple since it had already been done before.
Subsequently, the customer did not pay as close attention during the pre-production process to various decisions being made as it should have. The vendor ordered and implemented the systems and interfaces as were specified in the technical brief. As can be imagined, during the testing phase (not long before the updated warehouse was to go live) one of several problems became apparent; one of which was the system’s graphic interfaces did not make sense to the North American site. Various costly decisions had to be made on-the-fly before everything could work together as it should have.
Lessons Learned
There are a couple of points to be learned from these companies’ mis-steps. Specific to Company Y’s case, you need to know the equipment standards that are applicable in a given geographic area or country. Even equipment from the same manufacturer can be location-specific, and in some cases may not be compatible with your existing hardware or location.
Ultimately, the most important lesson to be learned by Company X and Y is this: You, the customer, need to control what is a very complex development process at all stages, and review your requirements as early and as often as possible. Close cooperation with the implementing vendor is key (preferably there is one vendor for both software and hardware). Both of you need to agree on the specifications of all the systems.
Ideally you will have no middlemen in the process. Direct communication between you and your software/hardware implementer will ensure the least number of problems before a successful WMS launch.
The next two companies faced some very challenging situations. Here’s how they dealt with them…
Hyper-Focused
A major international automobile manufacturer needed to update its legacy analog-to-digital data systems, and integrate new hardware with existing equipment in one of its central warehouses. As previously mentioned, simulators are invaluable here so they can imitate the legacy hardware to make sure it can integrate smoothly with the newly updated hardware and software choices. However, in this case, acquiring the raw data to feed into the simulator to make it as realistic as possible was a major challenge.
Observation and analysation of the system’s prior network traffic, data exchanges, and equipment movements were the first step. Unfortunately, in this first step there was a notable lack of existing documentation. It became necessary to create some of the raw data from scratch before a simulator could be developed.
Everything from highly sophisticated Programable Logic Controllers to reams of paper media were examined to understand the complex data streams from different systems. Web cameras were set up to monitor and record what was happening in the warehouse in real-time. This was a huge amount of effort to simply understand how the customer’s system processes its data before it could be used to create simulators.
All of this work had to be done just to determine the feasibility of integrating the desired new systems with the legacy systems. In the end, all of the front-end toil paid off as the legacy systems were smoothly integrated with the new, and the customer was extremely pleased with a modern, updated central warehouse.
Lastly, we’ll look at a heavy-equipment engineering company headquartered in Europe. Large equipment production is carried out at its 850,000 sq m plant. There was no dedicated storage area at its facility – the parts, from small items to giant assemblies weighing several tonnes, were manufactured in various workshops and then stored throughout the plant.
Therein lay the complexity of automating such a hybrid facility, as company representatives explained. Prior to the project, the stored parts were inventoried “on paper”. As a result, company management decided to automate the storage area of the plant by combining disparate storage racks into the general warehouse environment, and automate the loading and shipping processes.
The German group viastore SYSTEMS Gmbh, with viadat WMS was chosen as the supplier. The set-up and customisation work were carried out by First Line Software, the official partner of viastore SYSTEMS. Project realisation took six months. During this time, the viadat WMS system was deployed on-location and integrated with the company’s own infrastructure. The project allowed the plant to get rid of paper records and streamline the process of unloading, while solving the problem of temporary storage.
The whole system is integrated so that the delivery of parts to the assembly shop originates from one place. What makes this successful WMS project so unique is the fact that it’s not strictly speaking a warehouse. The automation here is integrated in an incredibly dynamic, heavy manufacturing, and assembly environment.
The Take-Away
How do a major automobile manufacturer and a heavy-equipment company’s success stories apply to your future WMS needs? You may see two companies with large budgets that will allow them to overcome any obstacle when automating their respective processes. However, the underlying strategies to achieve their goals are relevant to you and your own WMS plans.
In the case of the automotive company, it did not skip any preliminary steps and was actively collaborating with the vendor to ensure absolute accuracy in the data it was collecting. This active communication allowed for an incredibly detailed Technical Brief to be created, which in turn made the actual hardware and software installation go smoothly.
The definitive smart play by the heavy-equipment engineering company was to utilise the “one-vendor” concept. This ensured smooth automation integration, and easier future updating and servicing of both software and hardware installations.
Not every WMS developer vendor can claim experience in these processes. Take your time in looking for a vendor with a similar attitude towards business and corporate culture as your own.
Perhaps there are greater lessons to be learned by making mistakes. But when it comes to bringing a Warehouse Management Solution to your business, take the right steps and allow your company to be a class example in how to do it right the first time.
WMS technology innovator, SnapFulfil, has made a trio of key promotions as business continues to grow and flourish.
Philip Wright is elevated to Head of Global Support & CI (Continuous Improvement, a pivotal new focus area for the company), while Martin Coogan takes up the mantle of Head of the UK Customer Success Team.
Elsewhere in the business, Emma Faulkner has been promoted to Head of Software Development with immediate effect, from her previous role as Technical Development Manager.
SnapFulfil’s Chief Operating Officer, Stefanie Rollins, said: “These promotions are much deserved as we strengthen our operational productivity and efficiencies and develop the skills of our team. I’m so incredibly proud of all three individuals and it’s always a pleasure working with them.
“Martin has been instrumental in moulding our Customer Success Team (CST) and his dedication to the role, popularity with clients and commitment to his team stands out for all to see. Phil’s time with us has seen him fine tune our Service Desk, resulting in much increased efficiencies and improved customer journey, plus he’s been a key player in our initial CI initiatives.”
Emma reports into EVP of Implementation Services, Smitha Raphael, who heads up the revamped Product & Application Software department. She says of her promotion: “We are excited to have Emma lead the development team and expect to see cutting edge technology implemented, along with many interesting product features that cater to our customer needs in this ever-changing logistics environment.”
Emma has been part of the SnapFulfil team for four years, during which time she has been instrumental in bringing about positive process and product changes. She has enhanced platforms – especially carrier integrations – and the build and release management, along with version control processes.
Phil has been with the company for six years and his achievements to date include improving the quality of the company’s API documentation and making it more accessible and informative for customers. He has also led a revamp of the 24/7 Help Centre to include the likes of integrated Live Chat, customised content and real-time ticketing.
Martin joined SnapFulfil in 2015, initially as an implementation analyst and project manager, but since 2017 his people and solutions-driven skills have been utilised within CST, which looks after the more complex aspects of client integration, but also advises on how to best optimise the functionally rich
DiCentral, a leading provider of business-to-business (B2B) supply chain integration and collaboration solutions, has opened its first UK office in London. This UK investment further expands DiCentral’s European footprint, which started with the creation of DiCentral Europe in Germany in December 2018, following the company’s acquisition of Compello GmbH.
The new UK office will act as a local sales and support hub for DiCentral, with the company actively recruiting to grow the team in the region.
DiCentral has secured many new European customers over the last year. The UK office will provide local support for these new wins and existing customers. DiCentral’s UK team will be focused on growing the company’s business in the retail and automotive sectors, helping new clients to enjoy the benefits of seamless e-commerce and marketplace integration. It will also continue to execute its channel strategy by leveraging the company’s extensive integration experience with SAP, Microsoft Dynamics and NetSuite.
DiCentral provides EDI and supply chain integration for retail, manufacturing and CPG, 3PL and distribution, automotive and healthcare. It enables businesses to quickly connect with 3PLs, carriers, suppliers and other trading partners, integrate external data into ERP, WMS or accounting software, and maintain real-time visibility over B2B communications. This increases ROI, reduces redundant, error-prone data entry and removes the need to outsource key functions, providing real-time updates through customisable dashboards and mobile alerts.
“DiCentral is doubling down in Europe, as we look to service the needs of multi-national clients seeking to integrate their global supply chains,” said Jacques Vigneault, EVP Europe DiCentral at DiCentral. “With a dedicated office in the UK, we can ensure our clients are fully supported locally 24/7, and that we have a close understanding of their geographies and markets.
“Many businesses now have increasingly complex data integration requirements, and the Covid-19 pandemic has only heightened the need for faster and more efficient B2B digital transactions,” added Jacques Vigneault.
“With DiCentral, companies of all sizes can effectively manage all their fulfilment channels and software integrations on a unified cloud platform. This means they can focus on growing their business, rather than worrying about the complexities of integration.”
Headquartered in Houston, Texas, DiCentral has an extensive global network, with local offices in the Americas, Asia-Pacific and Europe.
First Line Software is hosting a free English-language webinar on Wednesday 12th May aimed at warehouse managers, owners and operators looking to optimise their existing systems and distribution centre operations.
Entitled How to remotely implement your Warehouse Management Solution, the webinar sets out to explore and resolve the complexities of warehouse intralogistics, including:
optimisation
integration
automation
management of material and information flow
First Line Software is a premier provider of software engineering, software enablement, and digital transformation advisory services to clients across North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. It partners with viastore to offer viadat warehouse management solutions (WMS). Together, they provide integration, automation, and management of materials and information flow to optimise the warehouse environment.
This knowledge is an essential requirement when:
Building new warehouse facilities
Planning WMS implementation
Upgrading your current warehouse system
You require transparency in your intralogistics
Who should attend the webinar? viadat pays off for your company when you have:
Shippeo, a leader in real-time transportation visibility, has been chosen by designer and integrator of complete supply chain solutions Savoye to provide a real-time shipment visibility service within its combined warehouse and transport management system, ODATiO.
“With over 30 years’ experience designing complete logistics and supply chain management software solutions, we recently launched ODATiO to offer customers a more seamlessly integrated, modular and customisable platform for managing day-to-day supply chain execution,” explains Savoye software publishing director, Abdessalam Khobizza. “The inclusion of real-time shipment tracking is essential to enable Savoye’s ODATiO to provide its users with full visibility into the lifetime of an order, from its creation to its delivery to the end customer.”
Operating across North America, Asia, in the Middle East and Europe, Savoye offers a large portfolio of logistics solutions combining hardware and software and ranging from manual or mechanised to highly automated or robotic installations. Unveiled in early 2021, ODATiO is a new modular, fully web and cloud-native combined WMS and TMS solution.
The innovative platform makes it possible for organisations to gain a more complete view of their end-to-end supply chain transport, to help streamline processes, better overcome challenges and elevate service levels.
“Integrating Shippeo’s multimodal tracking data will enable our customers to improve decision-making abilities by combining Shippeo’s predictive capabilities to be alerted and informed, together with the power of ODATiO’s operational workflows to react,” says Khobizza.
Tracking over 10 million transport orders across 72 countries around the world, Shippeo’s RTTV connects with over 140,000 carriers. The integration allows Savoye customers to take advantage of real-time location data and predictive insights for every delivery, as well as the most reliable and accurate ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival) calculation available on the market.
These data will enrich the level of information included within Savoye’s digital ecosystem and further enhance ODATiO’s capabilities, which cover flow synchronisation, order preparation, picking prioritisation, warehouse management and performance analysis.
Thanks to the information gathered through Shippeo’s standard API, users will be able to access Shippeo’s visibility platform via a direct link within ODATiO or directly in the solution making it possible to embed Shippeo’s visibility interface directly within the ODATiO platform.
Shippeo CEO Lucien Besse is thrilled to be working with Savoye: “We couldn’t be happier to see our real-time visibility and predictive capabilities creating more value for Savoye customers. Our combined solution will have a significant impact on their day-to-day supply chain activities thanks to better data and greater automation within processes.
“At Shippeo, we really believe that the future of supply chains lies in automation and we look forward to more collaborations with partners like Savoye to drive innovation in this space.”
Manhattan Associates Inc. has been named a Leader for the third consecutive year in Gartner Inc.’s Magic Quadrant for Transportation Management Systems.
Changing consumer delivery expectations, reductions in store sizes and locations and the desire to maintain business continuity have created a growing need for transparent and unified transportation solutions. Manhattan’s broad, deep and powerful TMS combined with its nimble integration and implementation services position it as a leader in this rapidly evolving industry.
“It is an honour to once again be recognised by Gartner Research as a Leader in transportation management solutions,” said Gregg Lanyard, director of Product Management for Manhattan Associates. “Manhattan TMS is designed to manage every transportation function, across any mode or size of network. Its state-of-the-art modelling and optimisation tools can increase profitability, lower a company’s carbon footprint and help users predict and adapt to future change.”
Manhattan’s TMS received one of the top three highest scores for Level 4 Complexity and Level 5 Complexity Use Cases in the Gartner Critical Capabilities report that accompanies the Magic Quadrant. Manhattan was also praised by its customers on the Gartner Peer Insights website. When compared to the other TMS Leaders, Manhattan’s solution was the most highly recommended by customers and rated highest for Integration & Deployment and Service & Support.
Manhattan’s transportation and logistics management solutions leverage advanced intelligence to solve the most difficult transportation problems. The software allows shippers and carriers to be more flexible and responsive to price and service pressures to harmonise inbound and outbound logistics management and carrier management.
Gnarlywood Group, a provider of complete backend merchandising fulfilment solutions for entertainment brands, has selected inVia Logic AI-powered warehouse execution system (WES) software to modernise its warehouse in Carlsbad, California, USA.
The software will bring immediate picking and replenishment productivity gains that will later be increased with the addition of inVia Picker autonomous mobile robots.
Gnarlywood has seen unprecedented growth in demand for its entertainment merchandise and has chosen inVia’s software to bring efficiency to its fulfilment processes. The system will identify the ideal slotting of inventory at all times, direct pickers to follow the most efficient pick paths, and coordinate the movement of all goods, people and equipment to ensure continuous order flow. All of these improvements are part of inVia’s software-only implementation, which it says delivers 2-3x increases in productivity over manual processes.
inVia, a provider of next-generation e-commerce warehouse automation solutions, designed its technology so it can be brought into a warehouse’s operations at a pace that’s right for each individual business. AI-powered software is easily integrated into legacy systems with a proprietary translation tool, inVia Connect. The same intelligence used to direct robots to pick with machine precision can first be applied to an existing workforce to help people operate at peak productivity.
Gnarlywood has chosen to bring the benefits of inVia Logic to its team to immediately ramp up and keep pace with growth. It will later augment that labour with inVia Picker robots as it expands capacity with new mobile fulfilment centres that are ideal sites for mobile robots. This system enables scale and flexibility as e-commerce demand patterns shift over time.
“We needed a technology partner that could deliver immediate productivity gains, as well as a path to full warehouse automation in parallel with our plans for business growth. inVia provides a unique solution that includes the most advanced warehouse technology and the ability for us to integrate it over time with maximum benefit and minimal disruption,” said Dayton Hicks, founder and chief executive officer at Gnarlywood. “We have big expansion plans and want a partner that can ensure we’re always benefitting from the most advanced technology. We knew we found that with inVia.”
Founded in 2012, Gnarlywood manages e-commerce fulfilment for some of the world’s biggest entertainment brands. It manages storage, customisation, value-added services, marketing, and shipping for a variety of products – from apparel to one-of-a-kind memorabilia. The variety of products and services it offers demands a flexible fulfilment process that can handle complexity.
“inVia’s scalable system will dramatically improve Gnarlywood’s order fulfilment productivity and accuracy, enabling their business to keep up with growing customer demand,” said Lior Elazary, co-founder and chief executive officer of inVia Robotics. “The flexible nature of inVia’s system allows for quick implementation and the ability to adapt as business needs change. We’re excited to become a partner to Gnarlywood as their business scales.“
SnapFulfil WMS is helping to power forward an automotive salvage specialist’s ambitious five-year growth plan, which is predicted to boost turnover to a £1/4 billion.
Charles Trent Ltd, based in Poole, Dorset and founded in 1926, is among the UK’s top three car recycling companies, with a thriving online parts business, but its labour intensive and unreliable, paper picking process wasn’t geared up for quick expansion.
Having invested £4million in a new 30,000 sq ft distribution centre at the start of the year, Charles Trent also ensured that an architecturally robust, highly flexible and easily configurable WMS was part of the digital infrastructure.
The new DC facility is 14 levels high and has top picking height of 13 metre and state of the art racking. Their high-tech operation has been influenced by Amazon, and is the only one of its kind in the country, where you can source a particular part online and then have it delivered next day.
Despite the pandemic challenges SnapFulfil WMS has been able to drive highly accurate storage, putaway, picking and packing via the RF scanners and massively improve visibility for all parties across unique and diverse product ranges.
Charles Trent’s Distribution & Operations Manager, Matthew Groves, says: “We used to have return issues and about 2-3 orders per day going astray within the old system, but we’re now achieving close to 100 per cent accuracy with SnapFulfil and we’re only just getting started. Full traceability like this is a real benefit in a variable business such as ours.”
“The storage and distribution transition from the old warehouse and processes to the new, digitally-driven distribution centre has also been pretty seamless.”
By the end of April ‘21 Charles Trent will be fully operational from the new DC, which currently has capacity for 60,000 ‘green’ recycled products, ranging from used components such as engines and gearboxes to small parts and interiors. With SnapFulfil’s assistance, 110,000 parts should be processed in and out during 2021, increasing to 170,000 in 2022.
Company resource is also much more streamlined, efficient and productive with the new DC in operation 18 hours daily, across two shifts – for a massive increase in order processing capacity, but without the need for additional resource.
Groves adds: “One of the other main reasons we chose SnapFulfil is its ability to scale with us and its flexibility to meet all of the ongoing and future demands of our business. The kitting functionality is great and can support rapid scaling of fulfilment processes, as well as multiple site facility rollouts.”
Another five potential new sites are due to open by 2026, all close to main population centres in areas such as the North, Midlands, South West, plus London and the South East, which will include both distribution and recycling centres.
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