It doesn't always have to be shuttles

Founded as a grocery store in 1907, Witt launched its mail order business throughout Germany in 1924. Today, the multi-channel company delivers women's outerwear, swimwear, lingerie and home textiles to twelve countries across Europe. Over the past seven years, the Witt Group has invested around 100 million euros in the new logistics center in Weiden. The most recent building is the Goods Distribution Center III (WVZ III), which has been supplying the picking department with pre-sorted cartons as a reserve warehouse since October 2014.

Centralize warehousing and shorten distances

Nine reserve warehouses in and around Weiden meant high replenishment costs for the Witt Group for order picking. Consolidating these warehouses at one location would optimize replenishment and delivery performance. With the increasing number of sales areas and the expansion of the product range, there were further reasons for a new building. Witt opted for an unusual solution from TGW: a three-storey high-bay carton warehouse (HBW). The general contractor from Wels in Austria was responsible for the steel construction, conveyor and storage technology, material flow computer and control system as well as the interfaces to neighboring trades.

The highlight: 70-meter-long bridge made of glass

WVZ III also includes the new incoming goods area. In its high-bay warehouse pre-zone, there is a loop and buffer for the pre-sorted cartons. Another highlight is the 70-metre-long glass bridge over which the pre-sorted cartons are transported from the high-bay warehouse to WVZ II for picking. Witt invested 41 million euros in this, the largest construction project in the company's history.

Storage on three floors

The pre-sorted cartons are transported from the high-bay warehouse to WVZ II via the 70-meter-long bridge.

On average, 10,000 cartons of textiles from Europe and Asia arrive at Witt every day. After automatic labeling and barcode registration at four incoming goods stations, the cartons are conveyed to the second floor. Cartons ready for storage are stored in the three-storey high-bay warehouse with its 450,000 storage locations - the heart of the facility. The high-bay warehouse is 28 meters high, 48 meters wide and 132 meters long. A total of thirty TGW Mustang Evolution storage and retrieval machines (SRMs) with a total capacity of around 3,500 double cycles per hour supply the three levels, each with ten aisles. "The three-level high-bay warehouse is the highlight of the system. Normally, around 420,000 storage locations are occupied, so we still have a bit of breathing space," explains Roland Dietz, Head of Logistics at Witt.

In the area in front of the HBW, there is a conveyor loop and twelve buffer lanes on two levels. This is where the cartons are retrieved, pre-sorted in the order in which they are required for order picking on trolleys in WVZ II.

Different functions under one roof

The pre-sorted cartons are transported in batches via two conveyor lines in the bridge to the WVZ II. There, the order picker pushes up to 16 automatically delivered cartons onto a trolley. The workstation for this was specially designed by Witt, its company doctor and TGW with ergonomic aspects in mind.

In WVZ III, there are also three workstations for post-processing, seven for quality management and single-item picking and six workstations for manual palletizing. The merchandise management system and ERP are "made by Witt". The material flow is controlled by a Material Flow Controller (MFC) from TGW, whose Commander control system also moves the conveyor technology and storage and retrieval machines.

Realization on schedule

As planned, the WVZ III went into operation after 17 months to the day. Following the ground-breaking ceremony at the beginning of 2013 and the installation of the racking system, testing began in March 2014. The WVZ III finally went live in October 2014. "It was a challenging time for all suppliers: We met all deadlines right from the start. In my opinion, that was the best and greatest achievement," says Roland Dietz, praising everyone involved. This is also confirmed by TGW project manager Otmar Weiss: "All important milestones were reached. The project was completed absolutely on schedule."

... there were only three left

TGW's innovative solution for reserve storage resulted in the reduction of the previous seven external warehouses to just three. The centralization saves distances, time and costs. Goods from the reserve warehouse are now available for picking more quickly.

The high-bay warehouse is also designed for future expansion. Roland Dietz believes that Witt is well equipped for the current tasks and is looking to the future: "For the future, I hope that the system will run as reliably as possible and that we will also receive very good support from TGW afterwards. Both sides worked well together during the project. It was good work, a very interesting project and it is also a successful result. I can only emphasize that."

Contact:Josef Witt GmbH 92637 Weiden Tel.: 0 18 05 / 21 21 00 E-Mail:[email protected] www.witt-weiden.de

TGW Logistics Group GmbH 4600 Wels, Austria Tel.: 00 43 / 7 24 24 86-0 E-Mail:[email protected] www.tgw-group.com