Not long ago, Radial Europe concluded its manual distribution centre at its Ommen location in the eastern Netherlands was no longer able to cope with the growing demands of the e-commerce business boom. Specifically, it needed a direct-to-consumer solution to fulfil orders for fashion items.

To survive the highly competitive business demands in the fashion industry, an absolute focus on the consumer is essential. In addition to being on time and delivering orders containing every item purchased, it also requires keeping late closing times so that consumers can order well into the night and still receive their purchases the next day.

The e-commerce fulfilment provider was facing challenges in terms of high-volume volatility with numerous stockkeeping units (SKUs) as well as having an assortment of items to coordinate. Managing these aspects ultimately contributes to a positive shopping experience that enhances the credibility and reputation of the brand – in this case, a major player in the clothing retail industry.

The shelving warehouse totals nearly 40,000 bin locations for boxed goods with a customer product range of around 20,000 constantly changing SKUs. As a result, the storage area was rapidly sprawling with picking routes up to two kilometres long, and the pickers needed nearly two hours to complete their routes.

Thus, the solution Radial sought had to respond to several requirements: a reduction in storage space, maximisation of storage density, shortened turnaround times, an increase in picking productivity and an improvement in handling bulky goods. The company opted to build an automated facility at a new location in Groningen, roughly 86 kilometres (50 miles) further north.

Given Dematic’s leading industry expertise and strategic partnership with Quicktron Robotics, Radial quickly understood the operational impact the Dematic solution – incorporating nearly 300 autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) – would deliver to its operations.

A critical component of the Dematic solution was the design of a process where goods are transported to the person instead of having a person move to the goods, which was eating up too much precious time and increased the potential for missed orders.

One of the outstanding features of the installed solution is the development of a goods-to-person process handled entirely by AMRs instead of static conveyor technology. Specialised robots are responsible for a variety of tasks and work together as an integrated solution between hardware and software. The system can easily be expanded relatively quickly and cost effectively using additional racks and robots with minimal disruption to warehouse operations.

Another unique aspect involves the introduction of hybrid picking stations. An employee receives totes and pallet cartons and can process several customer orders at once in a put station. Many smart functions have also been integrated in the flow of goods. When the last item is removed from a bin, the system always asks whether the bin is completely empty and if not, it creates a counting cycle so that the quality can be adjusted.

Following ramp-up and commissioning phases in 2023, the results of the automation solution are now apparent. Picking performance has quadrupled and packing performance is around one-and-a-half times higher than before. Meanwhile, the error rate has significantly dropped, which is clearly due to the elimination of the long walking routes. The robots now manage the task, allowing order pickers to focus on more productive daily tasks.

According to Ron Kleinsmit, warehouse manager at Radial in Groningen, the Dematic Bin-to-Picker AMR solution has led to improved operational efficiencies and the screen-controlled workstations have added convenience. They are intuitive to use, and have an ergonomic design, providing benefits to the humans at the new facility.

“We are now in a stronger position where we can fulfil every requirement a customer has. They simply tell us what they want to have happen and we can do it. Automation has proven to be a tremendous help in achieving the goals we had from the start!” beams Kleinsmit.