The warehouse management system, LOGIA streamlines the processes at Worcester Bosch’s spare parts warehouse in England, where the company is the market leader within heating systems for apartment buildings.
In the previous warehouse-setup, the goods were placed on several manual areas with pallet racks and a mezzanine in several physical levels. This resulted in an overload of internal transportation and wasted time for the warehouse employees.
To minimize the internal transport and increase the efficiency, Bosch decided to invest in 7 automated storage and retrieval systems and the LOGIA WMS, that controls both the systems and 3 manual warehouse areas. The manual warehouse areas consist of a floor stock where high-frequency goods are picked directly from pallets on the floor, a rack storage for low-frequency goods, and a buffer warehouse.
The new warehouse-setup entails an automaton area that is arranged with three EffiMats® for high-frequency goods and four ClassicMat™ automatic storage systems for less frequent goods. In the manual areas, respectively the 20 most high-frequency goods are picked in the one area, and the 10 most high-frequency goods are picked from the warehouse flooring area in immediate connection with the automaton area. The pallet rack area is utilized as a buffer area, where from full pallets and larger expanses of parcel are also picked. In addition, parts of the original mezzanine area have been retained for picking the most low-frequency goods.
LOGIA ensures that the entire warehouse corelates and guides the warehouse employees through the most optimal picking route. The goods are picked directly in the shipment packaging which is placed on the picking cart. Thereafter, the picking cart is delivered in the packing area, where orders possibly will be consolidated with picking in other areas of the warehouse. Then the shipping label will be printed, and hereinafter the order is ready for shipment. All actions have a minimum of process steps to make it as simple and timesaving as possible for the warehouse employees.
