New paths for online grocery retail

AuchanDirect.fr, a subsidiary of the French food retailer Auchan, specializes in online food retailing. The company decided to work with Knapp for the logistics in its new distribution center. The solution in Chilly-Mazzarin near Paris went into operation this year. Auchan was faced with the challenge of processing orders within 24 hours and guaranteeing timely delivery to its customers in the Paris region. E-Grocer, a system solution specially designed for the online grocery trade, enables online orders to be processed efficiently.

Optimal solution for e-commerce

Goods for the dry and fresh ranges, as well as fruit and vegetable items, are picked directly into the end consumer's bags in three different temperature ranges. An OSR shuttle provides medium and slow-moving items under particularly ergonomic conditions. Fast-moving items are picked directly from the shelving rack or flow rack warehouse. E-Grocer combines automatic and manual solutions so that customer orders can be processed optimally.

Facts and figures

Sector: Online food retail Location: Chilly-Mazzarin, France Warehouse size: 12,600 m² Temperature ranges: Dry range: +20 °C Fresh range: +2-4 °C Fruit and vegetable range: +6-8 °C Frozen range: -18 °C Performance: Average of 870,000 orders per year or 2.800 per day Decanting: 7 workstations for dry goods, 4 workstations for fresh goods Workstations: 8 Pick-it-Easy Health workstations for dry goods, 4 Pick-it-Easy Health workstations for fresh goods OSR Shuttle: OSR Shuttle storage and picking system, 8 aisles (17 modules with 16 levels each) - 34.816 storage locations OSR Shuttle shipping buffer, 2 aisles (16 modules at 16 levels each) - 4,096 storage locations for the dry goods range OSR Shuttle storage and picking system, shipping buffer with 5 aisles (17 modules at 16 levels each) - 10,880 storage locations for the fresh goods range Software: KiSoft WCS, KiSoft SRC, RF-Picking, KiSoft Scada, KiSoft Command

The path through the camp

In the incoming goods department, the delivered items are accepted and transported to the appropriate storage area. Empty order containers are automatically destacked and provided with a vinyl bag (bagging). A pallet or flow rack warehouse for picking fast-moving items is available for both the dry range and fresh items. By combining them into batch orders, fast-moving items are picked in a time-optimized manner.

At the Pick-it-Easy work stations, picking is carried out directly into the bags using the goods-to-person principle.

The OSR Shuttle enables space-saving and efficient storage of the containers. The high-performance storage and goods-to-person system provides the source containers in the correct sequence for picking at the connected Pick-it-Easy Health work stations. The user interface is designed according to the easyUse operating concept and guides employees through the picking process. A light guidance system detects errors during picking.

The fruit and vegetable assortment is picked directly from a shelf rack into the order bins. The bins are removed from the OSR shuttle and made available in the picking area. Once the items have been picked into the respective order containers, they are transferred to the OSR Shuttle for interim storage. A separate shuttle system is available for the dry range, which is used as a dispatch buffer.

Completed orders are stored until dispatch. Once the orders for a tour have been completed, the containers are automatically retrieved from the OSR Shuttle in the fresh food area or from the OSR Shuttle shipping buffer for the dry goods range and automatically stacked. Stacking takes place in reverse delivery sequence, which makes delivery even more efficient.

www.auchandirect.frwww.knapp.com