The Material Handling Blog

From concept to micro-fulfillment reality, Decathlon and Bastian Solutions worked together to create an in-store, customer-facing micro-fulfillment system.

Bastian Solutions’ team of engineers can help guide you through your automation journey. You can schedule an in-person meeting to discuss your operational challenges with our experts at Pack Expo International 2022 – October 23 – 26, 2022.

Bringing products as close and as fast as possible to customers triggered a new way of looking at fulfillment centers. In addition to large regional warehouses, microfulfillment centers (MFCs) are popular topics in retail, ecommerce and food industries. Before implementing any solution, it’s key to carefully review applications and properly prepare for current and future scenarios. This step can help you avoid key mistakes and select the right technology. The last thing you want to do is to install a technology that doesn’t do the job the way you expected or needed.

Over the past few years, the phrase “goods to person” has become mainstream. As distribution facilities look to service customers more quickly, optimize warehouse space, and improve accuracy of order fulfillment, goods-to-person technologies have become a realistic option to accomplish these goals. Read: 4 Questions to Ask Before Selecting Goods-to-Person Solutions

“Our existing 26,000 square foot facility was just not enough.” Gerrie Electric turned to small scale automation to unlock warehouse footprint and productivity opportunities quickly and reliably. The result – error-free picking, a boost in throughput, a trajectory to achieve and beat a targeted 3-year ROI and room to accommodate their immediate growth for additional robots and ports to handle the increased demand. As the largest independent, electrical lighting and automation distributor in Ontario, Canada, Gerrie Electric serves customers ranging from car and steel OEMs, pharmaceuticals and individual contractors performing on-site electrical installations.

« Notre installation existante de 26 000 pieds carrés n’était tout simplement plus suffisante ». Gerrie Electric s’est tourné vers l’automatisation à petite échelle pour lever les restrictions dues à la superficie d’entrepôt et permettre rapidement et de façon fiable des opportunités de productivité. Le résultat : un prélèvement exempt d’erreurs, une amélioration de la productivité, une trajectoire pour atteindre et surpasser un rendement du capital investi sur trois ans ciblé, et de l’espace pour accommoder la croissance immédiate pour des robots et des ports supplémentaires afin de traiter l’augmentation de la demande.

The question for today’s modern warehouses is no longer when should we automate, but how and where do we automate for the best impact? To help sort through these cutting-edge offerings, we’ve created a quick visual guide to understanding the basics of goods to person systems, including the different types, their benefits and important factors to consider. View the full-size infographic.

With all this innovation and growth in the goods to person warehouse automation sector, it’s vital to factor the impact on the whole system’s integration, tied together through software and controls. To compensate, WES systems are getting larger and more complex in order to integrate with new technologies provided by other vendors coming to market. To truly optimize a goods to person system, customers should consider each GTP technology’s merits, but also the software that will manage its operations.

Featuring capacity for goods to person system storage of 3.6 million products, Dafiti Group’s newest warehouse, called LEAP, houses one of the most advanced automation systems in the world providing fast delivery across Latin America. As part of the Global Fashion Group, Dafiti leads fashion and lifestyle ecommerce retail sales in Latin America and needed a facility and supporting technology to match their spirit for innovation and top-level customer satisfaction. This fast-moving system was expertly integrated with Dafiti’s current and future ecommerce growth in mind, offering a reliably convenient shopping experience for years to come. “[LEAP’s] scale and sophistication speak to the transformational growth of the fashion ecommerce industry and will help to propel our next ten years of growth in the region,” says Christoph Barchewitz, Co-CEO of the Global Fashion Group.

Con una capacidad del sistema de almacenamiento de 3,6 millones de “productos a persona”, el nuevo depósito de Dafiti Group, denominado LEAP, aloja uno de los sistemas de automatización más avanzados del mundo y ofrece servicio de entrega rápida en toda Latinoamérica. Como parte del Global Fashion Group, Dafiti lidera las ventas minoristas de moda y comercio electrónico en Latinoamérica y necesitaba unas instalaciones y tecnología de soporte al nivel de su espíritu innovador y de máxima satisfacción al cliente. Ese dinámico sistema se integró con pericia pensando en el crecimiento actual y futuro del comercio electrónico, para ofrecer una experiencia de compra confiable y práctica en los años venideros.

Designed for agility and growth, PUMA’s new Indianapolis distribution center was immediately put to the test facing unprecedented ecommerce demand in addition to new, unexpected safety measures. Opened in June 2020, the facility became “a beacon of hope” for PUMA’s North America ecommerce retail distribution. Bastian Solutions worked closely with PUMA, AutoStore and NFI/Cal Cartage to design, integrate and install an on-time, on-budget automation system that not only helped PUMA meet the accelerated demand but will also provide them room, as planned, to continue to grow their business. “I think more than just the tangible product, of it being on time and on budget what it really gave the company, in terms of this aspirational push forward of the future, it really was like a beacon of hope in a lot of ways,” said Bob Philion, President of PUMA North America.

“Quite frankly, we were gonna burst.” Sports company PUMA was not only quickly outgrowing their primary U.S. ecommerce distribution center in California, they were also facing increasing pressures in the rapidly evolving and growing North America ecommerce retail market. And, this was prior to the rapid ecommerce growth triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Looking to reach their east coast customers faster and more efficiently, a new automated warehouse was planned and opened in 2020 in Indianapolis, Indiana.