Mammut, a Swiss outdoor clothing and equipment manufacturer, worked with an investor to develop a concept for a manually operated warehouse. However, high operating costs for the warehouse led Mammut to question the concept again before realisation.

Dematic was asked to evaluate the manual concept against partial or full automation. Dematic was chosen because of its good reputation in high-performance picking systems and its market leadership in shuttle technology.

Last year alone, the Mammut Sports Group (MSG), which belongs to the Conzzeta Group and is headquartered in Seon, Switzerland, grew by around 10% compared to the previous year. The growth markets in Asia (for example, South Korea) contributed to this, as did Germany, the most important market in Europe. Since the German branch was established in Memmingen in 1987, Mammut has already had to move twice.

In the past, Mammut had two main warehouses in Europe, one in Seon, Switzerland, and the other in Memmingen, Germany. Both warehouses were also housed in several buildings due to a lack of space. Customs clearance took place when goods entered (inbound) the warehouse. However, this meant that customs duties were incurred a second time when goods were moved around the warehouse in order to optimise stock levels. Thus, in addition to the redundancy of the main warehouses, a considerable complexity had to be overcome across the various storage locations and new approaches had to be taken in goods logistics.

For strategic reasons and since around 70% of sales are generated predominantly in the EU, the decision was made in favour of a central warehouse in Germany.

The new concept has already reduced the total investment in buildings and logistics from €27.5 million to €25 million. This was mainly due to lower construction costs resulting from a 30,000 cubic meter reduction in space requirements to 130,000 cubic meters. Due to the larger building structure and the much greater floor area, construction costs of 22.5 million euros were estimated for the manual warehouse. With the highly automated solution, these could be reduced to 15 million euros.

In addition, the concept with its expansion options offers space for further growth in the coming years. And with regard to operating costs, in addition to the labour costs for a larger workforce, Mammut would have faced immense heating costs in particular, since all storage areas would have to be heated to at least 18°C in a manual solution. In the solution designed by Dematic, only minimal costs for heating and lighting are incurred in the 90,000 cubic meter high-bay warehouse.

From the signing of the contract to the planned start of operations, Dematic had only 17 months to implement the new warehousing system. Mammut's objectives were equally ambitious: restructuring and new processes in the supply chain, as well as preparing and executing the move from the various warehouse locations to Wolfertschwenden.

The result is impressive both visually and technologically. The building complex, shaped like a black cube, sets new architectural standards. In terms of energy efficiency, the building meets the Green Building standard. The insulation is correspondingly comprehensive and it is equipped with intelligent cooling and ventilation systems with heat recovery, as well as innovative heating systems and intelligent energy management.

In the incoming goods area, the boxes are manually placed directly from the container onto a telescopic conveyor and then automatically recorded via barcode and identified as small (400 x 600 mm) or large (800 x 600 mm) boxes with the corresponding height class. The number of items contained in the box is stored in the supplier's barcode and is checked again by weighing. Mixed boxes or boxes damaged during transport are transported to a repacking station and repacked into new boxes containing a single item.

All cartons are initially stored in the six-aisle miniload system with 140,000 storage locations. The six RapidStore ML20 storage and retrieval machines (SRMs) can pick up two small cartons at a time and store or retrieve them three deep per compartment. For this purpose, each RBG is equipped with a corresponding load handling device (LHD) and a further lifting carriage as an extension option for a second LHD. The mini-load warehouse is used primarily to ensure replenishment: items required for picking are transferred from here to the Multishuttle. Only large cartons are transported directly from the mini-load warehouse to the picking area and are also returned to storage as open cartons. At the same time, the AS/RS is an intermediate storage area for pre-labelled customer cartons that can be transported directly to the shipping area using the cross-docking method. This means that after being unloaded from the container by hand, these cartons are not touched again by an employee until the shipping label is affixed.

The centrepiece of the system is the four-aisle Multishuttle picking warehouse with 12 levels for 20,000 storage locations. Each rack level has its own shuttle and each aisle has its own lift, so that storage and retrieval can take place simultaneously at different levels with up to 600 double cycles per hour and aisle.

The Multishuttle only stores the quantities that will be picked in the near future. The picking warehouse is therefore only half the height of the miniload, which made it possible to place the system on the upper floor. This freed up more space on the ground floor for incoming and outgoing goods functions.

In the sequence tower, the cartons retrieved from the Multishuttle are pre-sorted for the various orders and consolidated so that they can then be transported in the desired sequence to the picking stations directly behind it. For example, heavy items can be picked first, followed by clothing sorted by size and colour, so that they can be unpacked and hung in the right order one after the other in the retail store.

With the help of a pick-by-light system, up to three orders can be processed simultaneously at each of the four picking workstations. To do this, the employees receive clear instructions on a screen and unambiguous light signals at the three packing compartments. Illuminated digits also indicate how many items need to be removed from the box that has just been brought up. Once the quantity has been confirmed, the item box is returned to the small parts warehouse or, if one of the small boxes is still needed for a subsequent order, it is returned to the multishuttle.

Once the customer box is full, the employee is notified that it is to be pushed away and that a new customer box is to be set up. Around 400 order lines with an average of three items can be processed per workstation and hour in this way.

Mammut has two main seasonal peaks when retailers receive their pre-order deliveries with the new collections. This means that almost 80% of deliveries can be planned in advance. That sounds logistically convenient, but the particular challenge at Mammut is that in many cases relatively few item cartons exist and all orders want access to them.

Some orders also have to be processed in advance at the system-supported Value Added Service (VAS) workstation for customer-specific labelling, which is located directly next to the picking stations and is connected to the automatic conveyor system. Here, special markings or customer-specific label sizes and label designs are attached to the goods, coat hangers are removed or special boxes are inserted. The processed goods then receive their own product number, as they are now assigned to a specific customer.

From the picking station, a lift takes the parcels down to the ground floor and the four packing stations. Here, employees place delivery notes and other shipping documents in the cartons, cushion the goods if necessary, and finally attach a parcel label to the closed carton. The last journey in the Europa Logistik Center is via a conveyor belt either to a pallet location, to be shipped by a forwarding agent, or to one of the two telescopic conveyors for parcels in Germany and parcels to Switzerland.

The system is controlled by the Dematic Material Flow Controller (MFC). It receives the transport orders from the warehouse management system, calculates the transport routes and generates and manages the transport orders according to priority, sequence and status. In addition, the MFC controls the conveyor system and manages the system status. Traffic jams, possible faults and the actual utilisation of the necessary operating resources are taken into account when orders are placed.

Communication between man and machine takes place at the control centre with the help of the Logistics Cockpit. Here, the warehouse manager can view a wide range of information about the current status of the entire system and efficiently monitor the processes and functions.

The logistics centre commenced operations right on schedule. Both partners also successfully mastered the challenging start-up phase. As a result, Mammut and Dematic have also signed a service contract for maintenance and servicing, as well as on-call standby.