Zone Picking System for Würth ensures 30 minutes order lead time

Würth is a world-leading company in fixing and assembly materials for professional end users. For their distribution centre in Den Bosch, the Netherlands, they selected a Zone Picking System from Vanderlande Industries.

Würth supplies products to installation and technical service companies. The total assortment is around 21.500 SKUs. High service levels are very important for these customers. This places high demands on Würth’s order picking system, such as short throughput times, very high picking accuracy and the ability to handle high peak loads. The company selected Vanderlande Industries to design and implement the order picking system. The Zone Picking System was built based on the ‘multi-segment principle’: not in a single long loop, but in several short ones. This significantly improves system capacity and order throughput compared with a ‘traditional’ long-loop set-up. The throughput of the system is around 12.000 orderlines / day (1.600 orders). Minimal order lead time is just 30 (minutes).

The system is a ‘pick and pack’ operation. Orders are picked directly into shipping cartons and cartons are closed fully automatically, eliminating the need for manual packing. Each picking zone has its own weight checking to verify if the right articles in the required quantity are in each carton, ensuring very high accuracy. Vanderlande Industries’ VISION Warehouse Control System was implemented to manage and control operations in the DC. In addition the RF system was integrated into Würth’s ERP system.