For its long-standing customer CBR Fashion, known for the brands Cecil and Street One, the logistics service provider is developing an automated and flexible material flow system that meets the increasing requirements and growth forecasts. To this end, Fiege is building a new pick tower at the Burgwedel location, in which 100 autonomous mobile robots (AMR) will initially support the picking of garments from summer 2023 and help to reduce throughput times.

Fiege has been working for CBR Fashion for 15 years and is responsible for warehousing and fulfillment as well as transport over the last mile. Stephan Wittenbrink, Managing Director of the Fashion & Lifestyle business unit at Fiege, says: "In order to increase our performance in the face of rising order volumes, we had to optimize the processes and structures, some of which had grown historically. By using collaborative robots, we are now creating a scalable picking system that perfectly meets the individual requirements of our customer."

The contract with the Isernhagen-based fashion company was recently extended. Patrick Maack, Head of Logistics at CBR Fashion Group, explains: "We have grown strongly in recent years and launched the new Street One Men brand in the summer alongside our women's wear labels. Our business is also subject to seasonal and promotional fluctuations. With Fiege, we are very happy to have a flexible logistics partner at our side who can keep up with our company's growth and understands the special challenges in the fashion and e-commerce business."

Fiege is currently building a four-storey shelving system at the multi-user center in Burgwedel. On a floor space of 6,000 square meters, it will hold almost 150,000 storage locations. From next August, an initial 100 AMRs will be deployed there, with the number set to increase to almost 170 robots by 2027. The Greven-based logistics service provider chose Locus Robotics as its project partner. Wittenbrink says: "The market-ready system enables simple and rapid integration. The Robots-as-a-Service program, which includes maintenance and support in addition to use, also eliminates high acquisition and operating costs, which is why we expect a return on investment in the first year."

In future, work will be carried out in fixed picking areas in the pick tower, each of which will only have a few aisles. The AMR will take over the routes between the zones. The employees interact alternately with different robots, each of which processes six orders in parallel. Using an RFID tag, the AMRs recognize which colleague is standing in front of them and prevent any language barriers with their multilingual software. Ulrich Geislinger, Head of the Fiege branch in Burgwedel, explains: "Thanks to the multi-bot approach, we expect a productivity gain of more than 30 percent in the picking process and significantly lower costs per unit, which of course also benefits our customer."