Ms. Schulte, your company claims to stand for high-quality, flexible and secure storage systems for high demands. What exactly are the high demands of your customers?

Andrea Schulte: In addition to very good quality at a reasonable price, scalability, modularity and expandability are becoming increasingly important in purchasing decisions. Our customers demand a highly individual solution, the planning and implementation of which can quickly become very complex. In most cases, a combination of different shelving systems is required for the optimum storage concept. In addition, I also clearly sense that our customers are increasingly longing for a relationship of trust with their competent contact partner.

How do you meet these requirements and how do you achieve high quality and flexibility in your systems?

Schulte: Gebrüder Schulte offers a broad, standardized product range in a modular system - from shelving to wide-span and cantilever racking through to pallet racking and multi-storey systems. Together with the wide range of industry-specific accessories, our project engineers can take individual requirements into account. Our Schulte storage concepts project division has already been able to provide the online beauty mail order company Flaconi and many well-known companies with the optimum storage solution.

Predicates such as family business, owner management, decades of experience or Made in Germany are becoming more important again. We develop the optimum warehouse solution with our customers in partnership and at eye level. In the best sense of a "full-service project implementation" with central interface management, we are always at our customers' side from the initial inquiry to the operation of the system.

There are many providers of storage systems. How do you stand out from them and how do you compete?

Schulte: We score points with efficient solutions - in other words, a highly individualized concept that is cleverly tailored to the unique needs of our customers. Our Multiplus shelving systems, with their innovative edge height of just 25 millimetres in combination with industry-specific accessories, often form the core.

Our recipe for success is intensive customer dialog. Only through attentive, personal and intensive communication at eye level can we develop the intuition for an individually tailored solution. For our customers, there is exactly one contact person in our company who can be reached at all times. He or she is the point of contact for all information and oversees the entire project - from needs assessment to project acceptance and beyond.

Which sectors currently require new storage systems or are upgrading their existing storage technology?

Schulte: E-commerce companies and industry in particular need to reorganize their warehouses. We consumers expect the goods we order to be delivered faster and faster. I see a trend towards more smaller units at logistics hubs, which is partly due to the shortage of logistics space. Easily scalable manual shelving technology is particularly in demand here for optimum compaction of the system. With suitable accessories such as boxes and shelf dividers, it can make a significant contribution and also offers ergonomic benefits. Thanks to its low edge height of just 25 millimetres, our Multiplus system enables up to 20 percent more storage capacity in the same space.

About nine months ago, you presented your "green shelf". How did the market react to it?

Schulte: In fact, we have only received positive feedback. Without Schulte Green, it is virtually impossible to realize a climate-neutral shelving system. We are proud to be the first storage technology manufacturer to offer a "green" shelving system. As no 'green' steel is actually available yet, we offset the_CO2 generated by pre-production, production and delivery by supporting projects such as reforestation of tree populations at home and abroad. In this way, we offset 100 percent of the_CO2 generated. We will continue on this path in any case and, in addition to the green shelving series, we also want to offer completely climate-neutral individual storage solutions in the future.

To what extent and in which areas are digitalized and automated processes part of everyday life in your company?

Schulte: Support from digitalized tools and simulations will certainly become more widespread in order to increase planning reliability. In this context, our Schulte 3D Configurator is certainly the first to be mentioned. This makes it very easy to configure shelving at any time, visualize it in real time and then output it as a finished quotation. As soon as the shelving systems become more complex, we use 3D visualization during the planning stage to show the customer a real image of the planned system; a video flight through the project is also possible. These views can then be used by architects for collision planning, for example. This helps to avoid potential problems with the structure in advance and shortens implementation times.

In the production area, we also use a fully automated shelving line to manufacture our Multiplus shelves.

How do you deal with the frequently lamented shortage of skilled workers - or is it not an issue in your company?

Schulte: With regard to the shortage of skilled workers, we are positioning ourselves as a genuine family business - our motto is therefore "We are Family". Our employees should enjoy coming to work and be able to develop their full potential with us. They should enjoy their work and the family atmosphere at Schulte creates a good basis for this. It goes without saying that we offer our employees flexible working hours and the option of mobile working. Parental leave for fathers is also no longer an exception.

What prospects did you start 2023 with?

Schulte: 2022 was a successful year for us and we started 2023 with big goals. As an owner-managed medium-sized company, we meet all challenges with over 40 years of experience in the development and production of high-quality shelving systems. Our planning experts find the optimum solution for every customer - in every industry. We offer premium quality "Made in Germany" at a top price-performance ratio and digital planning and sustainable implementation are a matter of course for us. 2023 can come.

And now a quick look ahead to this year's LogiMAT - are you bringing anything new to Stuttgart?

Schulte: We are really looking forward to this year's LogiMAT. Of course, we will once again be presenting the entire spectrum of Schulte warehouse technology to visitors - from shelving and pallet racking to multi-storey systems. There will be some new products to experience, such as a hot-dip galvanized pallet rack for outdoor use. The Schulte 3D configurator also offers new functions, which we will be presenting on our stand in Hall 1. Schulte Green will also be a topic again.

This article appeared in issue 3/23