The challenge: Next is a leading British clothing retail and mail-order company, and its logistics center in Yorkshire plays a key role in helping the company keep its promise of "ordered today, delivered tomorrow." The center was expanded in two phases to become a central hub for online orders from mail-order customers and also replenishment to 380 domestic stores.
The new solution needed to lower costs and boost productivity while mail guaranteeing next-day delivery for all orders received by 5:00 p.m.
Our solution: We designed our solution for Next to exploit the synergies between the warehouse, the order fulfilment system and the transport system. Every hour, the system can access over 1,000,000 storage positions and moves up to 100,000 articles of clothing.
Furthermore, it has the capacity to manage several product changes within one season.
At the heart of the solution is the Warehouse Control System (WCS), which enables an automatic flow of goods in close coordination with the customer’s own WMS. The hardware offers synergies as well. The combined transport and sorting system, the Dematic Crossbelt Sorter, eliminates the need for other transport systems.
Benefits for Next:
- Reduced costs because mail orders and retail orders are processed on one warehouse campus
- Automatic flow of material with one transport system reduces investments and costs
- High degree of transparency and fast response times thanks to real-time data
