Intralogistics for Managing Fresh-Food Products at Migros. An Optimum Mix of Manual and Automatic Processes.
Dematic has developed an innovative sorting and picking solution for the Migros Aare distribution center in Schönbühl, Switzerland. The system, which Dematic successfully installed during normal operations, is particularly impressive due to its intelligent mix of manual and automated processes. This strategy is essential for reliably managing order quantities ranging from 60,000 to 100,000 shipments every day while maintaining high quality standards. The new logistics system has enabled Migros to achieve the project target of cutting logistics costs by at least 10 percent and bringing the picking error rate down to less than 1 in 1,000.
The new logistics center in Schönbühl near Bern, that serves the cooperatively organized Migros Aare retail chain, supplies 130 Migros stores and restaurants seven days a week with fresh food, including its own dairy products, meat products from other suppliers portioned and packaged in house, as well as perishable convenience foods for the restaurant chain.
Furthermore, special sales and promotions as well as varying seasonal demand can cause great fluctuations in the total number of daily orders, ranging from 60,000 shipments on slow days to 100,000 on peak days of the week, with even up to 135,000 shipments on certain peak days of the year. It`s a massive logistics challenge because time/temperature-critical food products can only be kept in stock for short times, usually only buffered, the aim being to feed them as quickly as possible into the order picking and shipment flow.
Given these conditions, the previous system of manual order-picking with radio-controlled forklifts and sorting done by two closed-loop conveyors was no longer up to the challenge. The system designed by Dematic and installed during normal operations basically consists of three functional areas: flexible depalleting of incoming goods with three articulated-arm robots and manual workstations, a high-performance crossbelt sorter for distributing the boxes to a total of 96 terminal stations with manual palleting as well as to six cells with gantry robots for automatic palleting of orders for smaller stores.
The heart of the system is a crossbelt sorter with 244 carriers making up a closed circuit 183 meters long. Traveling at a speed of 1.8 m/s, approximately 8,000 boxes travel the circuit each hour, where they are ejected at their designated terminal stations.
The store size determines the process used. Goods for larger stores with bigger order volumes are palleted manually. However, an automated system was installed for smaller stores which generally only receive up to four pallets a day. In this case, the boxes with the ordered goods are transported directly to the robot cells, where gantry robots remove the corresponding boxes from the accumulation sections and automatically stack them on one or more of the 28 pallets available at each cell. The robots` flexible grippers are able to grasp up to ten different types of boxes and place them exactly on the pallets. This process ensures that up to 60 pallets can be prepared for shipment every hour.
The installation, integration and commissioning of the system were all done simultaneously "on the fly" during daily operations. After only a brief period of operation, Migros reported that the new system had even surpassed the project targets of cutting logistics costs by at least 10% and reducing the picking error rate to less than 1 in 1,000.
