News
Guaranteed customer satisfaction with automated storage and high performance picking system
22.06.2023
viastore SYSTEMS, a German multinational company that develops projects and manufactures automatized systems to warehouses and intralogistics processes, announces the delivery of the new automatized warehouse to Andrade Distribuidor, located in Arapiraca, state of Alagoas.
The company has acted for 35 years in the market, and distributes cosmetics products to the states of Alagoas, Sergipe, and Pernambuco. Already thinking of automating, once it was facing problems in handling and storing products for not having a single picking line – it was subdivided in 3 lines, without an automatic input of boxes, Andrade Distribuidor wanted a new concept of facility.
Another critical point was the continuous replenishment of the picking lines, requiring greater effort of the night shift. The areas available for picking did not meet the demand, requiring manual replenishment and involving several people, delaying the departure of the vehicles on the previous day. Aiming to enhance the business and improve the service to the customer with support of innovation, Grupo Andrade, which the Distributor belongs to, looked for options in automation. In 2016, after knowing a company of the same segment in Brazil that was already benefiting from the automation, a visit of the company’s senior leadership to China in 2018 provided access to technologies that convinced to adopt the solution ofviastoreSYSTEMS.
»We had already had in our operation a conveyor system with picking by monitor, far from an ideal model to our operation. After the travel of our CEO, Celso Pessoa, to China, we reactivated the development of the project with systems and software that would be able to support our physical, market, and productive growth, with return on the tangible investment«, tells Thales Souza, Andrade’s Logistics manager.
The building of the logistics center, with an area of 8,294 m² and 14 meters of height, got a new organization of the material flows withviastore’s expertise. The operation was divided into full cases and units picking, which passed to be stored in a Miniload and pallet rack structures, moved in a combination of conveyors and sorters. The Distributor adopted as strategy to store and move high movers’ items (curve A) in the Miniload, the medium movers’ items in Flow Racks, and the low movers’ items in shelves, with manual picking.In 2023, more than 95% of the SKUs of cosmetic units within the cosmetic department represent 81% of the turnover. They are in the fully automated picking line, improving the processes and, consequently, providing higher agility and accuracy for Andrade’s orders and deliveries, increasing the distributor’s reliability before its customers.
viadatWMS system, developed byviastoreSYSTEMS, controls the complete picking process of units and processes the orders according to Andrade’s business rules.viadatMFC controls the material flow on the conveyors. The orders released byviadatWMS follow through the conveyors for picking. Bar code readers and the picking by monitor support the picking process on the 24 stations, which are equipped with scales – such concept of picking on stations makes checking needless, since the products are read and weighted on every station.
»viastoreused an exclusive methodology to design future scenarios based on the volume of orders, movements, types of load (full and unit), as well as profile of the distributor’s orders, and, thus, we understood and indicated the type of automation more consistent with the distribution center«, explains Emerson Lourenço, Operations Head ofviastoreSYSTEMS in Brazil.
With the initial gains the automation provided, Andrade Distribuidor absorbed 15% in the volume of sales in 2022 if compared with 2021. In addition to the increase of 22% in the first quarter of 2023 in relation to 2022, the collaborators ended up absorbed in such a process.
»We had a great experience withviastorein all stages of the process. The differential in service, the professional qualification, transparency in communication, and presentation of data were essential for the decision making, which arose out of a feeling of broad collaboration and trust betweenviastoreand Andrade«, concluded Thales Souza, Andrade’s Logistics manager.