Spare parts supply for cleaning systems

Initial Situation

The rapid growth, continuous expansion of the range of articles and increasing direct supply to end customers made it necessary to devise a new concept for the location in 2009. To cope with the enormous quantity of shipments and the short delivery times required, the lead time of the orders in the distribution centre had to be reduced massively. In addition, the goal was to increase the storage capacity while cutting the error rate during order picking to under 0.01 percent.

Solution & Materialflow 

• GOODS RECEIPT AND STORAGE
  The automatic mini-load warehouse includes approximately 95,000 storage locations for totes. In eight shelving lanes that are each 77 metres long, our Mustang storage and retrieval machines ensure efficient storage and retrieval to/from the 14-metre-high shelves. The automatic mini-load warehouse supplies the order picking stations fully automatically.
• PICKING
  The picking system for Kärcher uses eight PickCenter goods-to-person workstations. Picking at the workstation is done by having two alternating source containers. Parallel to the small parts area, larger goods are picked in a separate area of the distribution center. A shuttle system is used as an intermediate buffer to enable consolidation of the orders. This reduces the number of individual packages that are sent to the customers, thus reducing shipping costs.
• PACKING & OUTBOUND AREA
  In addition to the goods in totes that automatically come from the shuttle system to the processing workstation, larger goods are provided manually. Most of the work in this area takes place in the afternoon between noon and six in the evening so that the orders are ready for shipment in time for the departure of the lorries. 

Highlights