Fresh picking for Delhaize with Witron system
March 14th 2008 In October last year, Belgian food retailer Delhaize Group tasked Witron with the building of a new distribution centre for fresh products at Asse-Zellik in Belgium.
The solution, which will go live in September 2009, is based on Witron's internationally proven DPS concept (Dynamic Picking System). This is the first time DPS will have been used in a fresh product area, with a temperature range of 2 to 4 degrees, for the highly dynamic picking of products such as cheese, meat and salads. The system consists of a number of identical self-sufficient modules in a miniload environment with fixed allocated workstations at a pickface.
Currently, the products are located in a conventional ground level pickface and manually picked. This requires the use of 13 different tote dimensions and types. With the new DPS-concept, only two tote sizes are needed – 60 x 40cm with heights of 12 and 24cm.
The articles are presented to the employees according to the goods-to-man principle and picked from tote to tote. Replenishment of the pickface is order related and automated by the system.
Based on a volume calculation in the Witron system, it is determined which products should be picked into which tote. In this, criteria such as "family grouping" (classification of the items into product groups ) as well as the layout of the store (planogram) are considered. After picking has taken place totes enter an order consolidation buffer before dispatch. As soon as all totes for an order are picked, they are automatically retreived from the system in the right sequence, stacked on a dolly, strapped and labelled.
The linking of all areas via a sophisticated conveyor network guarantees short throughput times for the fresh food products, while at the same time enabling picking at ergonomic workstations. Walking distances during picking are also dramatically reduced. More articles from Witron Engineering BV: | 
