By processing more than 75,000 TEU’s annually, the Landmark Group is one of the largest importers of non-food products in the Middle East. As a result, the company places a high value on intralogistics that can handle both a wide variety and high volume. Ashish Sood, Chief Supply Chain Officer of the Group explains the motivations for the gigantic DC project: “With this investment, we wanted to drive both technological progress as well as take on a pioneering position in the region in terms of logistics efficiencies and omni-channel fulfilment.”

As part of the selection process, the Landmark Project Team visited numerous reference projects in Europe to define the exact parameters of the project. “Based on the Dematic team’s deep knowledge and experience in this area, they became the preferred and most suitable partner for us,” says Ashish Sood.

Dematic delivered a fully integrated solution. What first draws the eye is the 43 metre tall pallet warehouse with up to 36,000 storage places. Moreover, Dematic equipped the high-bay racking with a fire-protection system with an oxygen-reduced atmosphere to store even delicate and highly flammable goods. The climate-regulated pallet high-bay warehouse is the largest in the UAE to date. The support structure of the building, including building shell, is made up of the shelving system itself. This rack-clad silo system guarantees a cost effective and sealed environment within the DC.

Goods reach the distribution centre in boxes in sea freight containers. The DC has capacity to process over 74,000 boxes per day on 10 automatic and 3 manual docks. These boxes are subjected to a laser-controlled contour check and measured precisely up to 1 millimetre. In this way, the system prevents boxes that cannot be gripped optimally from getting into the Multishuttle system.

Items to be processed within days are deposited onto the Multishuttle. Items that are not required in the near term are placed on pallets and stored double-deep in the high-bay warehouse by the 41-metre-high SR-U1500/1 stacker cranes with two telescopic forks.

Individual items are housed in boxes or containers in two Dematic Multishuttle systems with 22 aisles each. On 33 levels, 726 Dematic Shuttles buffer, sort and sequence items to be used in the next few days in the first system with 580,000 storage places. The daily requirement of a good 370,000 items is retrieved with the help of 528 Dematic Shuttle Static units in the adjacent Dematic Multishuttle on 24 levels. In this way, up to 15,000 totes per hour can be transported to the picking stations. By using a total of 94 lifts as well as shuttles controlled via power rails with very high acceleration and speed performance, one shuttle can operate between 700 and 800 storage spaces.

Dematic‘s patented Inter-Aisle Transfer system maximises use of space when transferring across aisles as well as storing double-deep. The system is not only the largest that Dematic has installed, it is also the fastest. The Landmark Group is setting new standards with this system, as Ashish Sood reflects: “With the mega distribution centre, we have set a logistics benchmark for the entire Middle East.”

The warehouse for textiles on hangers also offers impressive capacities: There is room for up to 2 million clothing items storage in the Dematic Garment-on-Hanger sorting system. Three 20 metre long ironing units with steam generators ensure that items come out of the system ironed for shipment. Items are stored in a software-controlled process so that retailers receive them in an order that most efficiently resupplies their stores and with throughputs of up to 250,000 pieces per day. Sixty workstations feed incoming textiles into the system as carton goods.

An 11 kilometre Dematic conveyor system for containers and pallets and a Dematic sorter connects the systems. “It marks a new era of speed and productivity for our supply chain,” summarises Ashish. Furthermore, 47 workstations for value-added services including e-commerce are planned for direct customer delivery. The system takes into account individual business or customer requests as well as other volumetric VAS requirements either during goods receipt or when the order is fulfilled.

An additional 150 workstations specified for the respective application complete the overall structure. Of these, 44 are goods-to-person picking stations for order fulfilment, 28 are refilling stations, and the rest are various quality and inspection stations.

The software is critical for smooth, optimal flow of materials at high throughput rates. The Landmark Group has committed itself, as well as its home-grown brands to deliver to stores and end customers within a certain period of time. This is ensured by Dematic software, which combines a warehouse management system (WMS) for stock management, with a warehouse control system (WCS) and a material flow controller (MFC) and dynamically repositions all items throughout the facility. 

According to Ashish Sood, choosing a hybrid servicing facility with combination of on-site & 24/7 remote service plan has worked well for their business. By following its guiding principle of “Always look ahead and build today to achieve tomorrow, the Landmark Group has set a course that will continue to improve its services and expand its capabilities.”