Automated central distribution centre for footwear, apparel and accessories for Euro Shoe
Euro Shoe's distribution centre in Beringen, Belgium serves more than 530 of the company’s stores in the Netherlands and Belgium with the latest footwear fashions. The company has well-known brands such as Bristol, Van Woensel (the Netherlands) Primo and Avance (Belgium). The highly automated facility plays a major role in delivering around 23 million items per year.
As part of Euro Shoe’s constant drive to increase efficiency, the company asked Vanderlande Industries to investigate how it could optimise its distribution operations. At that time stores were supplied from two distribution centres. Belgian stores were supplied from Diest (Belgium); Dutch stores from Zwanenburg (the Netherlands). The expected growth in volume and number of stores was also taken into account in the investigation. The study showed that Euro Shoe could achieve substantial benefits by combining the two operations into a single distribution centre. Hence the decision was taken to centralise operations. The selected location was a greenfield site in Beringen, about 80 km North-East of Brussels.
Because of the large number of SKUs and the seasonal nature of the business a batch picking system with automated sortation was chosen. This system is able to handle both ‘push’ and ‘pull’ flows. The system included automated receiving sortation, pallet flow racks and a shelving area, batch picking system with a shipping sortation system for prepacks and a shipping sortation system for pair boxes.
Euro Shoe has seen significant improvement in efficiency since the opening of the central distribution centre. The company estimates that the entire investment, including building a completely new facility, will be recovered in just seven years through savings on personnel costs alone.
An article about Euro Shoe can be found on www.logisticsit.com
