SDI Greenstone's sorter is the perfect fit
June 26th 2006

Holland’s leading independent shoe retailer Ziengs has installed a high-speed, high-capacity, sortation system from systems integrators SDI Greenstone at its distribution centre (DC) in Assen, in the north east of the country.

The custom-designed automated system, which replaces a manual operation, provides Ziengs with an enormous amount of flexibility in three key areas: distributing new product lines to its outlets, re-stocking shops, and rapidly transferring goods between stores to meet local demands and to fulfil individual customer orders within an impressively short time. The SDI Greenstone system, fabricated and installed by Holland-based sister company SDI Promech, has enabled Ziengs to increase its product sorting capacity by a staggering 525 per cent. Such are the improvements that the new system has brought that Ziengs expects to recoup its capital investment in less that two years.

SDI Greenstone also achieved a major feat in building a sorter with the required capacity into the very limited space available at the DC. As Ziengs’ Logistics Director, Andries van den Berg, comments: “Other companies that tendered for the contract told us it would be impossible to a fit a sorter with more than 10 drop-stations into the area available. They were wrong. SDI Greenstone’s system gives us 110 drop stations.”

This has been achieved despite having to design the system to fit within particularly low headroom, and to build it around several large structural pillars.

Ziengs’ previous manual sorting operations were handling 8,000 items a day. The automated SDI Greenstone system is currently sorting up to 50,000 items each day – an increase of 525 per cent. The system can in fact operate even faster, sorting up to 60,000 items per hour.

“With the system’s speed, capacity and flexibility, and the fact that it enables us to reduce substantially our inventory at the DC, we expect to achieve payback within 18 to 24 months,” says Andries van den Berg.

“Apart from the vastly greater capacity and speed that the SDI Greenstone system offered, it was also by far the most elegant, flexible – and simple – solution. There was a huge difference in the company’s way of thinking, and its way of doing business. SDI Greenstone’s approach is very much partnership-based,” he concludes.

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