Argos goes full speed ahead with automated warehouse
Argos is the largest non-food retailer in the UK with annual sales close to £4.3 billion. The company sells a wide range of home, electrical, garden and DIY products, through its catalogue, website and over 700 shops in the UK and Ireland.
Faced with significant growth, Argos wanted to increase product availability and reduce costs. Argos decided to centralise the distribution of small items to increase availability and improve picking efficiency. At the same time Argos wanted more control over the supply of direct imports, which make up a growing proportion of the product range.
The automated warehouse includes a central warehouse for imported goods. This operation is a container-to-palletisation ’factory’ at goods receiving with a POSISORTER sortation system and an automatic palletising system for 150 pallets per hour. The pallets are transported through a conveyor system to a 15 aisle automatic pallet high bay storage (AS/RS)with 90,000 locations.
The goods-to-man ODS order picking system is the highlight of the operation. An AS/RS system with 12 miniloads and a storage capacity of 70,000 totes distribute product totes to 56 order picking workstations. Here operators distribute the products with a total throughput of 20,000 order lines per hour supported by pick-to-light displays.
All automated processes are managed by the Vanderlande VISION Warehouse Control System (WCS), which is integrated into Argos’ OMI WMS. The automated warehouse brought Argos significant reduction in operational costs by freeing up resources at the busy regional distribution centres. Managing direct imports in bulk yields greater savings and ensures continuity of supply. The ODS order picking system requires 40% less space than a zone picking system with similar throughput. The very high productivity of 350 order lines per man hour is leading to substantial savings in operational costs.
Argos and Vanderlande continuously work together to improve operating efficiency and system performance, maximise availability and to help Argos’ operational team to achieve their Key Performance Indicators, which are reviewed daily. For this purpose Vanderlande has a team on site at Barton 24/7. This allows Argos to fully concentrate on their core business.
“Vanderlande Industries showed good understanding of our business requirements. Their solution gave us the best overall Return-On-Investment”
Catherine McDermott, Argos Distribution Director
For the video "a major advance in logistics" about the Argos project, please see www.yourlogisticstv.com
