Completed WMS projects
bee-line accessoires Vertriebs GmbH
Description of the functional and company-specific requirements on potentials WMS providers
Branch
- Textile industry (clothing, shoes)
- Cosmetics
- Retail industry
The Fraunhofer-Institute of Material Flow and Logistics (Fraunhofer IML) was charged by bee-line accessoires Vertriebs GmbH (bee-line) to plan and implement a modern warehouse, order-picking and shipping system. During this project the team warehouse logistics supported bee-line during the selection of a warehouse management system (WMS) for a new picking and shipping warehouse. In the last 15 years with its keen sense of fashion bee-line has developed into a leading retailer of costume jewellery. as is best demonstrated by its major label SIX. The company’s philosophy is marked by teamwork and a flat hierarchy.
Motive and goal
For some years the bee-line achieves and annual growth rate of about 30%. This sustaining progressive development as well as a growing product range in line with an increase in the number of mini orders prompted be—line to expand its capacities and to optimize the logistic processes at its Cologne subsidiary by building a new logistic center.
Fraunhofer IML was charged to develop the forward-looking logistic concept. At first, a scenario had to be developed and solutions had to be found and evaluated regarding their cost/benefit ratio. The planning horizon was fixed for 2012 considering existing and future article data and sales figures. In view of the company’s business philosophy social aspects and ergonomical work places were given priority.
A system provider should be found who fully met the requirements concerning the material flow as well as the IT (WMS) of the new logistic center.
Requirements profile
The as-is analysis showed that the manual processes are highly productive. Each picker completes 350 picks/hour. i.e. a throughput of 9.3 million items per year. For comparison: for 2010 an annual throughput of 30.3 million items is forecast, i.e. the picking volume will more than triplicate.
At first, three solutions were favoured which clearly meet bee-lines requirements profile:
- Container store with multi-transfer vehicles for the edgewise, dynamical provision of B, C and D articles as well as the statical provision of A articles in shelves.
- Automatic container store (miniload store or Shuttle) All articles are picked in a 2 hour batch.
- Sorter for the 2-level batch/inverse picking with dynamical provision out of the miniload store.
The team warehouse logistics summarized the processes, strategies, performance data and interfaces to other systems in a performance specification for the new WMS. This performance specification is part of the call for bids for the new logistic center.
Result
The result of this project was
- a performance specification which specifies current and future function requirements on the WMS
- and the company-specific requirements on the WMS providers in such a way that it is suitable for tendering.
