After relocating from Crailsheim, the new 11teamsports headquarters opened in February 2019 on a 25,000 m2 site in Satteldorf, Baden-Württemberg. The complex near the A6 freeway comprises a 7,500 m2 central logistics center, office units, a regular store and an outlet store. The logistics center currently stocks around 30,000 different items - soccer boots, jerseys, training and team sports equipment, lifestyle and various fan articles from numerous clubs in Germany and abroad.

Together with the intralogistics experts from Gebhardt, 11teamsports designed and implemented a customized intralogistics system consisting of a high-bay warehouse for pallets and a shuttle warehouse for containers as well as various other storage, picking and workstation equipment. The entire warehouse management and control of all material flows is handled by Gebhardt StoreWare. By using the Gebhardt Galileo IoT platform and Gebhardt Galileo Insight, the entire intralogistics system is digitized in a cloud. With the help of the emulations, the entire system could also be put into operation in advance.

High-performance shuttles master growing dynamics
Apart from a few simple steps, storage in the miniload warehouse is fully automated. An employee removes the goods from the delivery box and places them in the container provided. He scans both the item and the box, and the goods are automatically married to the container via the Gebhardt StoreWare. Excess cartons and packaging material are disposed of directly via a waste conveyor and the box is automatically transported to the automated small parts warehouse via one of a total of four lifters. The sporting goods retailer demands a high level of team performance, especially from the 140 OLS shuttle vehicles, which have to bring the right box with the right goods from around 75,000 bins to the picking workstation. The shuttles didn't have much time to train, as a warehouse fill level of 86 percent was reached just a few weeks after commissioning.

Felix Duffner: "Our shuttle warehouse consists of four aisles. We have opted for a one-level strategy, which means we have a shuttle on each individual level. Up to 1,500 containers are moved in the OLS every hour." This means that 11teamsports is ideally equipped for the growing dynamics of the multichannel business and can process both B2B/store orders and individual orders from the online store from the miniload. If a container is required for picking, it is transferred from the OLS warehouse to the loop via the lifters. The respective destination is notified from the loop and the StoreWare then routes the bin to the correct workstation. During the picking process, the employee is shown the item to be picked and the respective quantity in a StoreWare dialog. To ensure that the picked item is assigned to the correct order container, the employee must confirm this via a pick-to-light display.

Each workstation processes around 360 containers per hour. The StoreWare then routes the containers either to the automated bag packaging system with a capacity of up to 420 bags per hour or to the carton area. A special feature of the bag packaging is the fully automatic connection of the bag machine to the trolleys of the shipping service provider directly in front of the loading bridges. From the carton area, the container reaches the first floor via a spiral conveyor. Once the carton is closed, it moves on to a labeler, which applies the shipping service provider's label.

Increased efficiency through dashboards and digital twin
With the fully automated shuttle warehouse, 11teamsports has achieved a new level of efficiency. The newly gained transparency through the complete digitalization of the warehouse and warehouse processes also contributes to this. Felix Duffner: "With Gebhardt Galileo Insight, we can analyze any business data and thus make our processes much more efficient. We can determine exactly when picking and incoming goods were working at full capacity or where there was an overload. This allows us to better deploy our staff and will make us much more effective at the end of the day. In addition, thanks to the digital twin of its warehouse in the Gebhardt Galileo IoT platform, 11teamsports always has an overview of all system components of the automated material flow system. With the help of end-to-end condition monitoring and predictive maintenance, operating costs can be saved and the availability of the system maximized at the same time.