Baldur-Garten therefore decided to re-engage its long-standing and experienced partner Pierau Planung to expand its order picking and shipping capacities. Both companies have around 25 years of logistics experience between them. "Even at our former site in Bensheim, the planning approach was very interesting for us, due to the seasonal nature of the business, to keep investments in technology low," explains Bernd Koch, Managing Director of Baldur-Garten. With the help of Pierau Planung, a system was implemented that significantly improved processing. The effect: a significant increase in daily shipment figures, from the three-digit to the four-digit range.

"The last time the engineering team from Pierau Planung successfully supported us was over ten years ago with the greenfield construction of our existing hall in Bensheim," continues Bernd Koch. "At that time, the Hamburg logistics experts not only designed and implemented the logistics, but also made preliminary work in accordance with the Fee Ordinance for Architects and Engineers with the specifications for the administrative area planned in the new building, took over the entire preliminary planning, and prepared and placed the tenders so that the takeover of the general contractor for the execution planning could follow seamlessly and smoothly. Based on this positive experience, they were also awarded the contract for the current logistics expansion."

Flexible system for optimum shipment processing
To achieve an optimum cost-benefit ratio, Pierau Planung developed a concept that provides for largely manual order picking. "The period of additional processing is relatively short compared to the entire year," explains Arne Pierau, Project Manager and Managing Director of Pierau Planung. "Together with KOLL, a long-standing partner of Baldur-Garten, who implemented the IT for the new warehouse management system extremely quickly, we developed a semi-automated, flexibly scalable solution. The advantage: it absorbs order fluctuations and can also cope with very different consignment sizes, from seed packets to cherry trees, without affecting productivity."

In the extension building with a floor area of around 3,500 m², processing can now take place independently of the processes in the existing building. The areas of packing, storage and picking of A and B articles as well as C articles from the existing building are combined here for parallel processing. The consignment analysis at the start of the project showed that a small proportion of items already generate complete consignments. These are now processed in the extension building, at the picking stations for A and B articles that are also available there. The modified warehouse management system also makes it possible to merge the C items from the existing building with the items from the extension building using the new packing tables there. "The A items are stored on pallets," says Arne Pierau. "Due to the higher turnover of goods, we have set up an area with larger storage locations for these items."

Goods preparation is set up in one half of the new hall extension: Some of the delicate plants are watered again and then manually wrapped in special blister protective film. They are then transported on trolleys to the other part of the hall, where man-to-goods picking and forwarding of the plants to the packing area takes place. This is where the items are combined into orders and packed into shipping cartons, labeled and the finished consignments are automatically strapped. Each packing module is connected to a conveyor system - for transporting the finished shipping packages to the warehouse. There, the consignments from both processes are finally combined in the outgoing goods department.

"With the decoupled processing in the extension building, we have managed to position ourselves for the future," says Bernd Koch. "We can increase our shipping performance at short notice with constant quality when demand increases, as is currently the case during the planting season, and at the same time, day-to-day business can continue to be carried out as usual using the existing systems."

The article appeared in materialfluss 11-12/2020.