EDEKA supplies some of its stores in northern Bavaria from its regional warehouse in Gochsheim. To secure the future of the location, EDEKA has decided to expand its existing logistics center with an additional warehouse complex, relying on automation. The contract for implementing the warehouse expansion was awarded to intralogistics expert SSI Schaefer, whose Giebelstadt site is located near the EDEKA warehouse in Gochsheim in Lower Franconia. A 4-aisle high-bay warehouse in silo design, in which the pallets are stored double-deep, is being built next to the existing building. Four energy-efficient SSI Exyz storage and retrieval machines will be used for storage and retrieval. In addition, SSI Sc äfer is installing roller container conveyor technology and pallet conveyor technology.

The future high-bay warehouse will primarily house part of the dry goods range. When creating the additional storage capacity, EDEKA favored an automated high-bay warehouse in order to achieve the desired throughput even at peak times.

The regional warehouse in Gochsheim receives goods from EDEKA's suppliers as well as goods directly from the EDEKA central warehouse. After goods receipt, the pallets are transported via pallet conveyor technology to the high-bay warehouse (HBW), where the goods are buffered temporarily. Two picking levels per aisle are integrated into the high-bay warehouse in accordance with the tunnel picking principle. The pallets temporarily stored in the high-bay warehouse are provided for picking via inclined roller conveyors at the ergonomically optimized workstations. There, the cases are then picked manually onto the corresponding roller containers and pallets, from where they are transported to the outgoing goods department via a special roller container conveyor system. If a store requires single-variety pallets of an item, these are retrieved from the high-bay warehouse and automatically transported directly to goods issue via the pallet conveyor system.

The Wamas logistics software from SSI Schäfer is responsible for warehouse management. This has already been in use in the EDEKA network since 2003 for the majority of trading companies throughout Germany. The order is rounded off by a service and maintenance contract for the site.