SPAR Maria Saal will pick its dry goods with Pick-it-Easy Move

: Published on in Technology

Variety, availability and the quality of goods are crucial criteria in the purchase decision of consumers. A store can meet these demands with the help of a sophisticated intralogistics system, which plays an important role in the preceding steps of the supply chain.

Especially the food industry faces very specific requirements. To achieve a higher level of service for the shops, it is necessary to maximize the stock turnover rate. And of course it is extremely important to consider the item range that often has a tremendous range in terms of article variety and packaging type, the preparation of deliveries in compact and stable order load carriers for each shop as well as the ideal ergonomic work station for the warehouse staff. KNAPP’s Pick-it-Easy Move is optimally suited to fulfil these requirements. This innovative solution by KNAPP especially features highly-efficient and economic handling of fast-moving articles as well as a high level of ergonomics throughout all processes.

Pick-it-Easy Move is a semi-automatic system for picking the entire range of fast-moving items. The goods are directly picked from a full pallet and placed in the corresponding order load carrier. This system ensures a high level of ergonomics for picking staff.  Both the source pallet and the target load carrier, very often a roll container, are provided at the ideal height. Besides individually adjusting the unloading and loading height, the articles can be moved from the source to the target in a smooth lateral motion. Thus, lifting heavy products is replaced by a much more gentle movement. As a result, the physical strain of the warehouse staff is reduced significantly.

The combination of automation and manual handling provides a system that unites the advantages of both approaches. This option offers the high flexibility of the manual picking processes – compared to a fully-automatic solution, the human, as valuable factor, can handle various types and qualities of packaging much more flexibly and efficiently. And, the system achieves the required high performance by including automated processes. This system provides at least twice the picking performance compared to a conventional method – with up to 500 picks per hour. Pallets are provided in the required order, which makes it possible to create roll containers in a store-based sequence.

Pick-it-Easy Move is also a very useful option to increase performance even in smaller distribution centres. Starting with September 2014, SPAR in Maria Saal (Austria) will use a special application of Pick-it-Easy Move for picking shelf-stable goods. The station is integrated in the existing regional distribution centre and items are supplied manually using the existing forklift trucks. Pallets are retrieved from the high-bay pallet racking which serves as buffer after the goods-in area. The continuous operation in the warehouse is not interrupted during integration of the system.