‘Bakker Bart’ (Bart’s bakery) is a franchise concept with 115 stores in the Netherlands. The concept is supported by Bart’s Retail B.V. with a central bakery and distribution centre in Beuningen.

Since 1999 Bart’s Retail is part of the largest bakery concern in Europe, the Italian company Barilla. An important step to deal with the rapid growth was to implement an AS/RS system for crates in the frozen area (-25º C) in 2001. From here 5,000 to 7,000 crates are shipped daily to the 115 stores.

The following processes take place:

• Transport of empty totes to production
• Transport of totes with frozen bread from production to miniload
• Receipt of external products
• Storage in three miniload cranes
• Orderpicking
• Roll cage loading

Most important advantage of the system is that there are no people in the frozen area anymore and that the orderpicking takes place ergonomically. Further the system has led to high space utilisation, high efficiency and accuracy.