Marktkauf Laichingen, Germany
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Order-picking processes controlled via Pick-by-Voice
Marktkauf Laichingen, Germany
The customer:
The customer, Marktkauf with its head office in Bielefeld belongs to the Edeka Zentrale AG & Co. KG, a leading retail company in Germany. The Marktkauf Logistik GmbH handles the logistic service functions for the sales sectors of the group. The company has some 900 employees. Total turnover (warehouse) in 2004 amounted to some 1.4 billion euros. For the Laiching and Bielefeld locations, Dematic implemented an innovative Pick-by-Voice solution.
The challenge:
It was Marktkauf's objective to make order-picking in the dry goods warehouse, the cold store and in the fruit and vegetable warehouse more efficient and enhance its quality. In order to achieve this objective, the order-pickers were to be relieved from activities such as recording and confirming order-picking jobs, conveying order-picking pallets, securing pallets in stretching machines and labelling the pallets.
Our solution:
Dematic developed a solution for Marktkauf which is completely integrated into the customer's IT environment and automates the processes. The customer's warehouse management system transmits the order-picking jobs to the Dematic Voice Manager which completes and then acknowledges the jobs. The order-pickers use the automatic guided vehicle system (AGVS) which receives the orders from the material flow computer as a "pallet caddy". The Pick-by-Voice solution provides the communication interface between the order-pickers and the material flow computer, and is the heart of this solution.
Implementation:
The automated order picking solution based on Pick-by-Voice was launched in two phases. In the first phase, the Pick-by-Voice basic solution was implemented which initially made a complete conversion to paperless order picking possible. In the second phase, the automatic guided vehicle system was integrated.
The AGVS serves as an intelligent "pallet caddy" for the order-pickers and, in addition, also handles the task of transporting the picked pallets to the fully automatic stretch wrap machine. The AGVS subsequently conveys the pallets to the dispatch department.
This step-by-step implementation increased acceptance among employees and enabled the company to confidently launch the system. The solution is designed so that the sub-systems may partly also operate independently.
If the host system fails, for example, the sub-systems can independently process all orders on hand.
The order-pickers quickly adopted to pick by voice instructions. Order-picking instructions and correct location checks are handled by voice via the head set. Various languages and dialects have been implemented by means of customized language profiles. In addition to the headsets with headphones, integrated ambient noise filter and microphone, the mobilevoice units, which is of industrial design and merely weighs 440 g, ensures trouble-free wireless connection to the IT systems. This solution for the Laiching location convinced Marktkauf to such an extent that the same solution has now also been adopted at the Bielefeld location. In total, some 150 mobile voice units are used at Marktkauf.
Customer benefits:
