40,000 boxes served by 60 robots
After the Covid-19 pandemic, the company’s owners decided to invest into a new warehouse, for which they purchased a modern AutoStore robotic system. It has forty thousand bins served by sixty robots. The warehouse also includes three conveyors – one each for receipt, dispensing and sorting. All the technologies and processes, from receipt out to the loading of goods on the truck, are coordinated by an Aimtec digitalisation platform. The company is also considering the future installation of an automatic packing line.
“Our primary goal was to eliminate manual labour in the newly constructed perfume warehouse. Having deployed the AutoStore technology in cooperation with Aimtec, we achieved our goal: collaboration between humans and an automated warehouse. Efficiency has increased and errors have been minimised, with an expected recovery of the initial capital expenditure within five years,” says el nino parfum logistics
Process management and optimisation from receipt to picking
During receipt, an operator manually unpacks goods from a pallet and places them into a plastic transport crate, which they transfer onto a receipt conveyor. The crate rides off to the AutoStore system, which prepares the individual boxes (bins) with corresponding items on the basis of commands from the platform Aimtec DCIx. Each crate is divided into six sections. The system accounts for each item’s size and weight so that the boxes are not overloaded. It guides the operator in the warehouse, telling them into which box section they should place the goods. Returns are processed the same way as receipt from the supplier.
Describing the picking process, Aimtec DCIx Consultant Pavel Straka explains, “Goods are picked from either AutoStore, the pallet warehouse, or in some cases the A zone earmarked for high-turnover goods. A good example here is a gift packaged with each perfume as part of a promo. Our system accepts orders from the Abra ERP and continually generates commands for dispensing them into all three zones.”
After dispensing, the system sends box-preparation commands to AutoStore, which conveys boxes up to the top floor. After a transaction is chosen, the boxes ride in and the operator moves the goods into plastic crates. Aimtec DCIx confirms that the order is complete. If a damaged perfume item has arrived, the system offers the operator a different box and stops offering the original one. If the crate is OK, the operator places it onto the dispensing conveyor and, once it has passed through the validation work centre, moves the goods into paper boxes. The system handles order correctness and discrepancies in the event of missing or damaged units. It also divides up paper boxes on the sorting conveyor by courier (DPD, PPL and others).
A summary of the automation technology
AutoStore
- 40,000 boxes (bins) and the possibility to expand these by another 20,000
- 60 control robots
- 9 ports for receipt and dispensing
3 conveyor types:
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receipt
-
dispensing
-
sorting
About el nino parfum
el nino parfum is one of Europe’s largest online perfumeries. Located in Nová Paka, Czech Republic, it was founded in 2003 by the two owners who head up the company to this day. It has a modern logistics centre and brick-and-mortar stores, but its best-known face for customers is its elnino.cz e-shop. It delivers perfumes and cosmetics both throughout the Czech Republic and to Slovakia, Poland, Romania and many other European countries.
Media contact:
Marie Mundilová
Chief Marketing Officer
marie.mundilova@aimtecglobal.com
+420 732 664 815
Aimtec
We guide manufacturing and logistics companies in putting Industry 4.0 into practice. We integrate our solutions with cutting-edge technology into a single functioning unit to make digitalisation a real asset.
