Parfums Christian Dior, a company of the LVMH Group (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton), distributes perfumery and cosmetic products worldwide. The main production site in Saint Jean de Braye in the d'Orléans region distributes Christian Dior brand products as well as Benefit and Makeup Forever brands. The central warehouse also supplies the warehouses in the USA, Russia, Asia and the Middle East. All sales outlets in Europe are also supplied. All purchases via the Dior.com website are also fulfilled from here. In order to create capacity for further growth and to optimize work processes, Parfums Christian Dior decided to work with Knapp.

Incoming goods: the basis for error-free processes
"We chose Knapp because we had the feeling right from the start that we were on the same wavelength as the team. Knapp understood our special requirements and complex processes and translated them into a highly efficient automation solution," explains Olivier Sorbe, Head of Logistics for the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region. From the production area directly adjacent to the central warehouse, unmixed and mixed pallets with full cartons reach the incoming goods department. A total of two robots take over the fully automated depalletizing of the cartons. The dimensions and weight of each individual carton are recorded using intelligent image recognition technology and transmitted to the warehouse management system. In this way, the basis for error-free processes is already laid in the incoming goods department. The depalletizing robots transfer the full cartons directly to a conveyor system. Small cartons are transferred to trays. Cartons and trays are automatically transported to the central OSR-Shuttle storage system and stored.

In addition to the fully automated goods receiving area, manual goods receiving workstations are also available: Here, goods that are not suitable for processing with robotics are prepared manually for storage in the OSR shuttle.

The heart of the storage system: the OSR-Shuttle
The automatic storage system OSR-Shuttle is the heart of the system. Both full cartons and open cartons for single item picking are stored here. The software selects a suitable storage location in the racking system for each carton and tray. This ensures that every item can be located and retrieved from the system at any time.

The OSR shuttle extends over a length of 50 meters and a width of 30 meters. The system currently consists of seven aisles with 38,190 storage locations. Containers and trays measuring up to 600 x 400 x 320 millimetres can be stored double-deep in the system. As Parfums Christian Dior expects its stock (SKU) to grow by eight percent per year, the shuttle can be extended by three additional aisles with a total of 16,416 storage locations. This provides sufficient storage capacity for future growth.

© Scarce

The OSR Shuttle also handles the buffering of orders at Parfums Christian Dior. As soon as all the goods for an order are available, they are automatically retrieved from the shelving system and made ready for dispatch. This has the advantage that order processing can be decoupled from dispatch, allowing resources to be used more efficiently.

Goods-to-person picking
A total of eight ergonomic goods-to-person workstations are available for efficient manual picking of individual items. With the goods-to-person picking principle, employees are always provided with the goods in the right order and at the right height. Intuitively designed user interfaces on touchscreens - so-called easy-use user interfaces - support error-free order processing. This ensures ergonomic and efficient manual picking processes. In addition, the Pick-it-Easy work stations are specially adapted to the requirements of Parfums Christian Dior and are suitable for the small and light cosmetics items that have to be picked here. A total of 2,100 order lines per hour can be processed at the Pick-it-Easy work stations.

These workstations are connected to the OSR shuttle via a pre-zone. Each workstation can call up any item in the system at any time. This enables efficient and continuous order processing at each workstation. Each item only needs to be touched once before it is delivered.

Palletizing robots for efficient shipping processes
Full cartons are retrieved directly from the OSR shuttle and prepared for dispatch. In the first step, the cartons are automatically labeled and, in a second step, brought into the 100% correct sequence for automatic palletizing. The automation of these process steps was one of Dior's key requirements and was successfully implemented. A total of three robots take over the palletizing of most orders in the dispatch department. This has significantly increased efficiency. At the same time, the robots relieve the employees, as they only have to manually palletize a small proportion of goods ready for dispatch.

The KiSoft Packmaster software for packing pattern calculation enables optimized automatic pallet formation. It calculates the ideal packing pattern for each pallet and passes this information on to the robots. In this way, for example, packing specifications such as "stack heavy items before light items" can be taken into account automatically. The robots stack each carton in the designated place, and the pallets are then automatically wrapped and prepared for delivery.