More power in shipping

Jens Rosenberger, Head of the Münster site of meinarkenmode.de, spoke to Materialfluss about e-commerce and the requirements for the new warehouse concept.

Material flow: As an online mail order company, you certainly have an eye on logistics. What are the requirements behind this for your company?Jens Rosenberger: For most people, ordering online means fulfilling their wishes as quickly and easily as possible. Our customers therefore expect a reliable and increasingly fast shipping and delivery service. Ideally, the ordered goods should reach the customer the very next day. For this reason, we also work with a fixed logistics service provider for shipping. Before the goods can be handed over to the service provider, the items still have to pass through a number of stages internally, all of which must be optimally interlinked in order to achieve our goal of maximum efficiency.

Quick check

Requirements for

• Storage of women's and men's fashion
• Enlargement of the storage area and optimal use of space
• Fast order picking and fast incoming and outgoing goods

Scope of order

• Advice, planning, delivery and installation

Special features

• Existing warehouse with platform that had to be integrated
• Optimization of the warehouse for current requirements with constant flexibility towards new requirements

Benefits

• 6-fold increase in incoming goods speed
• Optimum utilization of storage space
• Sources of error minimized
• More efficient order picking

MFL: Is this why you have just adapted your warehouse in terms of storage space and concept?

Rosenberger: Yes, because when we started in 2012, we were able to process the orders that were still coming in at a manageable level without any problems. Over the years, not only the number of orders but also our range has continued to grow. So now it was time to create more storage space and also to develop a concept that would enable us to process orders efficiently and without errors.

MFL: How did you come across Schulte Lagertechnik of all companies among the many shelving suppliers?Rosenberger: It happened relatively quickly. We became aware of Schulte Lagertechnik on the recommendation of another e-commerce mail order company. In order to check this reference, we invited two other providers to develop a storage concept for us at the same time. It very quickly turned out that the first recommendation was absolutely right. The staff at Schulte Lagertechnik simply understood best how our day-to-day business works and what is important to us, especially in terms of logistics. The overall concept was also coordinated on the basis of this understanding.

MFL: What specific requirements did you place on Schulte Lagertechnik?Rosenberger: In the logistics of an e-commerce mail order company, especially in the fashion sector, new seasonal trends, customers' desire for fast delivery and a high returns rate across the industry are practically part of day-to-day business. And these were just some of the challenges that Schulte Lagertechnik had to face during the concept phase. In addition, we already had a heavy-duty high-bay warehouse that was not to be rebuilt, but "only" expanded. In terms of planning and design, this meant that the existing racking systems and platforms had to be taken into account as well as the short, medium and long-term growth targets of our company.

MFL: And how was Schulte Lagertechnik able to meet these requirements?Rosenberger: The entire shelving concept from Schulte Lagertechnik is based on a high degree of modular flexibility, which is extremely important for a start-up company like us. The shelving rack with the 25 MULTIplus85 shelf was the right approach for our two different storage box formats. The high turnover rate with frequently changing seasonal products and the rapid growth of our company demand sustainable and flexible solutions. Schulte Lagertechnik planned a compact mixed system consisting of shelving racking and pallet racking for fast-moving items and integrated it into the existing system. Our existing warehouse was sensibly connected to the shelving system via a new Schulte system platform. Today we store our goods on 11,000 storage locations. The entire system can be converted, expanded, dismantled or rebuilt at any time, depending on where our journey takes us.

MFL: What did the investment ultimately achieve for meinemarkenmode.de?Rosenberger: Our warehouse was completely digitalized and converted to a dynamic storage system, which enabled us to make much better use of the available space. The goods are now not assigned a fixed storage location, but instead a free, unused compartment is always used. The rotation of goods - fast and slow movers - can also be taken into account when allocating space. The scanners used for incoming and outgoing goods and the pick-by-voice technology for order picking make the processes in the warehouse more efficient. In addition, the warehouse aisles have been designed so that the picking trolleys can move in parallel in opposite directions. In this way, a clearly measurable route and runtime optimization was achieved for the employees in order picking. The result of the new warehouse concept is a significantly higher system efficiency! This includes, for example, that the returns department has been strategically positioned between the warehouse and goods inwards for fast processing. Incoming goods are now received six times faster than before. Quality management has also been significantly improved.

www.meinemarkenmode.dewww.schulte-lagertechnik.de