Vanderlande Industries has installed a new cross docking system at the national DC of Cofares, a Spanish pharmaceutical products distributor. The system handles the distribution of products to all local Cofares warehouses in Spain. The system can be characterised by two concepts that are linked together in a very smart way.
Processes cross docking:
The main flow within the DC is the cross docking flow. This flow consists of the following steps
- Receipt of product
- Transport of pallets by pallet conveyor system to depalletising station
- Manual depalletisation and automatic labelling at one of the six workstations
- Sortation of cartons by a double-sided POSISORTER™ to one of the 200 outputs
- Manual palletising
Processes order distribution:
An Order Distribution Station for the preparation of orders with non-full cases is located on a mezzanine floor. This area is fed by cartons coming from the cross docking sorter.
- Sortation of cartons to ODS area and transportation to required zone
- Scan carton and distribute required amount of product to order totes
- Transport order totes to cross docking sorter and sortation to one of the 200 outputs
- Manual palletising, together with complete cartons
The system in Guadelajara has been operational since April 2003.