Sports and lifestyle clothing is booming. In order to be able to deliver quickly, New Wave built a logistics center for the exclusive distribution of the traditional Swedish brand Craft in Germany. The distribution center in Geiselwind, Lower Franconia, which is located directly on the A3 and close to the A7, is a milestone for delivery within 24 hours. Still was commissioned to plan and install the intralogistics system. One of the intralogistics expert's highlights is the Active Floor Compensation (AFC) assistance system for the MX-X high-rack stacker. The AFC system enables the narrow-aisle order picker to reach its maximum travel speed.

The previous New Wave warehouse had become too small for German sales. With 10,500 square meters of space, the new logistics center now offers a better service. Craft collections account for half of the retail volume at the Geiselwind site. The majority of the other brands are mainly supplied for finishing, such as printing or embroidery. For this short-term business, orders that arrive from the Oberaudorf headquarters by 2 p.m. can be picked and prepared for delivery on the same day. The new logistics center is complemented by a showroom. An outlet for all clothing brands is due to open in the foreseeable future.

Warehouse planning down to the last detail
The aim of warehouse planning is to achieve optimum utilization of storage and transport resources while minimizing warehouse management costs. Still first analyzed the requirements for the new logistics center as part of the planning process. A team of local experts and intralogistics specialists in Hamburg worked out various warehouse solutions based on the material flow and vehicle analyses. The resulting logistics concept includes the layout design, the selection of suitable racking systems in combination with the corresponding vehicles, including barcode printers, scanners and vehicle terminals, as well as a platform system for the latest Craft collection. A high-bay warehouse system was installed to make maximum use of the hall height for storage. The planners divided the warehouse into a ten-aisle narrow aisle warehouse and an eight-aisle wide aisle warehouse to ensure a high degree of space utilization and optimum material flow.

Ergonomics also in focus
The racks with narrow aisles and high space utilization are ideal for items with large quantities and medium turnover. An MX-X narrow-aisle stacker is used there both for order picking and for storing and retrieving complete pallets up to a height of 8.30 meters. When developing the MX-X, Still paid great attention to the user-friendly and ergonomic design of the workplace. For particularly ergonomic working, the MX-X was also equipped with a tilting barrier. This makes it easier to access the goods, even if the distance to the pallet is a little too great.
With its face-to-face traffic, the wide-aisle warehouse is ideal for items with a high turnover. The racking is served by two FM-X reach trucks and five EK-X vertical order pickers.

AFC assistance system increases handling performance
In addition to safety and ergonomics, New Wave is also concerned with efficiency - the handling performance must be right. However, the condition of the hall floor does not allow the MX-X to run at maximum speed. With a lifting height of up to 8.30 meters, a height difference of three millimeters from the right to the left lane would still be acceptable, but up to 9.5 millimeters were measured. This is where the advantages of the AFC come into play: thanks to the assistance system, full vehicle performance can be called upon even if the hall floor is not completely level.

The AFC system detects unevenness in the lanes of the load wheels and compensates for this in real time from the left to the right lane. This system, which is unique on the market, reacts without delay even at the maximum possible driving speed thanks to the fastest processors.
In contrast to passive systems, which only dampen, vibrations are actively prevented before they occur. This makes it an alternative to cost-intensive refurbishment of the warehouse floor. When heavy loads are stored and retrieved at high lifting heights, vibrations also occur in the MX-X mast. The driver has to wait until these vibrations have subsided. To reduce both, another intelligent assistance system, Active Load Stabilization (ALS), counteracts this.

Efficient order picking
To optimize order picking, 33,000 carton picking locations and 8,500 pallet locations for replenishment were set up on the lower five shelves and the respective floor levels of the entire high-bay racking system. All storage locations are assigned to fixed storage areas in the merchandise management system and divided into A-, B- or C-turning items for quick access. Replenishment is stored in one of the pallets above and is controlled by the two FM-X reach trucks in the wide-aisle warehouse and the MX-X in the narrow-aisle warehouse. Every day, around 3,000 Promoware items are picked using the EK-X order pickers. By the end of the year, around 13,000 team sports articles will be added to the range. A second MX-X vehicle from Still is already available to handle this.