No people in the frozen area with automated order picking system at Bart's Retail
‘Bakker Bart’ (Bart’s Bakery) is a franchise concept with 180 shops in the Netherlands. Shops are supported by Bart’s Retail B.V. with a central bakery and distribution centre in Beuningen.
At the company’s central bakery, the Bakker Bart product range is prepared according to the company’s innovative ‘bake-off’ system. Bakery products are prepared, frozen, put in totes, kept on stock and sent to the shops. The shops prepare and bake the products in-store. This unique system provides customers with freshly baked goods throughout the day.
From the distribution centre, 5,000 to 7,000 totes are shipped each day. An important step to deal with their rapid growth was to implement an Automated Storage and Retrieval System (AS/RS) for totes in the frozen area, where the temperature is a constant -25°C. This 3 aisle miniload AS/RS system has a total of 28.000 storage locations (double deep). In a later stage the system was expanded with a QUICKSTORE HDS system with 6 shuttles in order to achieve full automatic tote picking. Totes up to 20 kg are stacked and loaded into roll cages automatically.
Automating this part of the process means staff is no longer required in the frozen area, significantly improving working conditions. Other benefits of the automated order picking system are:
- High efficiency because of full automatic order picking
- Efficient space utilization
- High operator productivity and efficiency
- High picking accuracy
- Energy efficiency because of compact storage in frozen area
