With a market share of over 39 per cent, a revenue of €8.2 billion, and 30,000 employees, the NorgesGruppen is the leading food retailer in Norway. Mid 2014, the company awarded Witron as the general contractor for the design and implementation of a perishable distribution centre for the wholesale division named Asko.
The goal of the project is to optimize the logistics of the entire perishable section in a sustainable and cost-efficient manner. In addition, ASKO wants to adapt to future requirements in order to offer their customers an even better service in stores.
The new logistics centre with a size of 242,000 square feet is located in Vestby (South East of Oslo). Starting at the beginning of 2017, it will supply more than 2,500 stores and outlets on a daily basis with over 6,000 different meat, sausage, and dairy products.
"Consumers have an elevated demand for higher quality especially for these product groups. Therefore, we require a logistics system that ensures a high level of flexibility, transparency, permanent availability, as well as a gentle product handling throughout the entire material flow", explains ASKO project manager Olav Johnsen. "Moreover, it is important for us to offer an attractive work environment to our employees, as they work within a cooled working area every day. This is an extremely important competitive advantage in Norway, a country with very low underemployment and high ergonomic demands".
On a peak day, Witron's picking systems OPM (Order Picking Machinery) and DPS (Dynamic Picking System) will pick more than 400,000 cases onto pallets, roll containers, and into totes in a store-friendly manner. The OPM consists of 14 Case Order Machines (COMs) and a 28-aisle tray warehouse with 165,000 storage locations. A modular expansion for full building capacity with 18 COM machines is already considered in the overall concept. The DPS system contains a four-aisle tote warehouse with 86,200 storage locations, 28 picking, and six repack stations. The area for articles that cannot be picked fully automated is semi-automatic (UC-OPM). Orders that are pre-picked in the OPM or DPS are efficiently consolidated and completed with further article groups at ergonomic workstations. An efficient order consolidation, containing DPS as well as OPM articles is therefore ensured.
