35 degrees outside, sophisticated technology inside

In the shade at 35 °C and a humidity of more than 90 percent - 250 kilometers inland in Brazil, SSI Schaefer built a distribution center for the Boticário Group with state-of-the-art conveying and order picking technology. 180 containers of steel had to be transported to the construction site. Initially, there was no electricity or running water on site. "Despite the extreme conditions, we were able to ensure reliable project progress and hand over the system on schedule at the beginning of the year," says Dieter Gelowicz, the responsible project manager at SSI Schaefer, not without pride.

New distribution center with 20,000 storage spaces

The cosmetics group's franchise stores in the north and north-east of Brazil will be supplied from the new distribution center in São Gonçalo dos Campos in the Brazilian state of Bahia. Gelowicz continues: "São Gonçalo marks the end of several years of cooperation, during which we have built three large warehouses with different functions for the cosmetics company in Brazil. The facility in São Gonçalo presented us with major physical and logistical challenges, which we overcame in partnership with the customer."

Picking according to recipe

Two different material flows are set up for order picking according to an innovative concept: Products with a high throughput are transferred directly from the SRMs in the high-bay racking to storage locations from which the individual cartons are picked from the opposite storage location via the pick-to-belt system according to Wamas' specifications. In six picking aisles on two levels, a total of 1,300 pallet spaces are provided in the racking system for this purpose. Order picking takes place in two stages. First, the cartons are removed from the pallet and labeled using a mobile printer. The employees then place the cartons on the conveyor belt, which feeds the cartons to an automatic uncapping machine. This opens the cartons to access the individual products and forwards them to the picking area. Based on the label information, the conveyor belt guides the cartons precisely to the correct picking location, where the order picking of the A-items takes place.

Three major projects in Brazil

SSI Schaefer has implemented three major projects for the Boticário Group at the São Gonçalo dos Campos, São José dos Pinhais and Camaçari sites, which have since significantly increased the efficiency of the cosmetics group. Miguel Letenski Neto, Supply Chain Director of the Boticário Group: "The commitment and flexibility of the intralogistics specialist had already convinced us in the previous projects." A 5-aisle high-bay warehouse with 46,200 storage locations for double-deep storage was built in Camaçari. Controlled by Wamas, raw materials and packaging materials for production supply and shipping as well as finished products are stored there.

Four manual handling stations have been set up for the medium and low-speed lathes in order production. They are served by the pallet conveyor system with full pallets. The employees pick up the required number of cartons, label them and transport them to the relevant requirement location in the picking area. The opened source pallets are returned to the HBW via the pallet conveyor system, empty pallets are automatically removed from the circulation system, stacked and transported to the goods issue area. In this way, the dispatch warehouse achieves a total picking performance of more than 1,800 cartons per hour.

www.ssi-schaefer.de