THE CHALLENGE
Maintaining inventory availability
in a busy urban area
THE SOLUTION
Low-touch urban
replenishment center
Meeting urban needs on demand
Grocery stores in the country’s most densely packed cities don’t just serve consumers. They sometimes are an emergency resource for restaurants who run out of essential items like eggs, bread, or produce. When that happens, restaurants send someone to the nearest grocery store and clean the place out.
Unexpected events can create a ripple effect that results in out-of-stocks for the store’s regular customers.
Dynamic urban environments require dynamic replenishment of ambient, refrigerated, and frozen foods.
From just-in-time to just-in-case to just need it now.
Urban food retailers typically replenish once a day. However, out-of-stocks can be a daily occurrence in this hard-to-plan-for environment. Add eCom to the mix, and the potential for missing out on incremental sales opportunities rises exponentially. The ability to replenish on demand would be a boon to annual store profits, but it requires a new level of picking and packing performance and flexibility. This is only possible with modular autonomous robotics, intelligent logistics software and sector-specific expertise. This innovative, next-generation shuttle system supports multiple temperature zones. It also changes rack line systems and accesses all the lifts on a level. These unique capabilities make one-touch urban replenishment a reality, because:
- Every workstation can access every item
- Items are retrieved in the exact sequence required
- Intelligent software keeps track of the entire stock
Once picked, manual packing of pallets combines with sophisticated packing software, which:
- Changes flexibly between optimization goals
- Groups and separates articles
- Calculates goods-to-person sequences
- Calculates the best possible stacking patterns
- Chooses the best carrier for each order
The software can accommodate a variety of load carriers and handles all kinds of packaging.
52%
of surveyed supply chain leaders say their supply chains need a lot of improvement.
–SAP/Coleman Parks Research
Keep food flowing with an urban replenishment center
The urban replenishment center is essentially a micro distribution center (MDC) that’s designed to replenish stores multiple times a day. In principle, it’s like a very large micro fulfillment center (MFC), but instead of filling totes for eCom customers, it builds pallets or mobile carts for store replenishment. This innovative new distribution model solves for last-mile store replenishment in highly populated urban environments.
- Receiving and decanting is on the ground level, just as it is in micro fulfillment, but of course on a larger scale.
- The high-performance and highly flexible shuttle system is also on the ground.
- Picking and packing are elevated. Ambient, refrigerated and frozen food flows through different subsystems.
- Once assembled, pallets are lowered down to ground level and transported to the dock.
A robust software stack delivers all the benefits of software-driven distribution and then some. The intelligent software:
- Manages everything from goods in to goods out
- Controls all logistical functions— all the way down to machine control
- Optimizes both manual and automated processes
- Tracks shipments between the warehouse and the store
- Coordinates inventory across multiple sites
- Provides business-critical information at a glance
- Selects the best carrier for each order and optimizes carrier routes
Built for today and tomorrow
Direct-to-customer (DTC) fulfillment can be added at a later date and will not impede performance of the live operation. That’s because DTC operations are located on the ground level and the current picking and packing operation is elevated aboveground. As stores increasingly serve the rapidly growing urban population, more workstations can be easily added and new carton sizes can be flexibly integrated.
The built-in flexibility, easy scalability and omni-flex-ability are all hallmarks of low-touch logistics, which is exactly what’s needed for a new world with new challenges.
