The online food retailer Knuspr is expanding its logistics center – with state-of-the-art storage technology.
Shopping bags can be packed in no time at all.
Garching – The red robots move across the warehouse floor as if they were following a rehearsed choreography.
Grab a box here, place the box with chocolate bars in a chute there or let a robot pass by for a moment.
You accomplish a feat;
only classical music is missing.
In fact, the robots are part of the highly complex warehouse automation - a symphony of data sets, clever shelving systems and potato chips.
The system is the new heart of the Knuspr logistics center in Garching.
You see their white vans everywhere
Knuspr is the online trade in groceries and household items.
Goods are bought online and delivered to your home by our own couriers.
The logistics center of the company, which is headquartered in the Czech Republic, is in the industrial area of Garching-Hochbrück, from where the region around Munich is supplied.
You can see their white vans everywhere: in Ismaning, Unterhaching and especially in Munich.
Before the groceries and household goods start their journey to the customers, they have to be packed in paper bags or cloth bags.
Until recently, some of the 200 employees in the warehouse had to collect the goods, which took a lot of time and space.
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The packed bags go into Knuspr's delivery vans.
The drivers bring them to the front door.
© Brouczek
Warehouse is 7500 square meters
The warehouse is 7,500 square meters, with warehouse manager Jens Andrä, 56, preferring to measure in cubic meters.
"We don't want to store air.
It's dead money," he says.
Andrä wants to make better use of the empty space in the warehouse, the production capacities are to be increased.
That is why the Autostore storage system was purchased.
The 96 robots now collect the goods.
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Carousel station: warehouse manager Jens Andrä (right) explains the rotating packing system.
© Brouczek
The system packs dry products such as fabric softener or biscuits into individual boxes and stores them in a stacking system.
The clever system knows in which box the products are.
When the paper bags are put together for the customers, the robot automatically chooses the right container, for example with canned ravioli.
The crate with the cans is driven to an automated packing station.
There, an employee takes the ravioli and puts them in the bag.
A kind of carousel is installed in the station: when the employee has taken the canned ravioli out of the box, another box with the customer's desired goods is immediately handed to them.
Simple as brilliant.
Even the British news channel BBC has announced that it will visit the camp next week.
"Six running meters can be saved per article," says warehouse manager Andrä.
By that he means the previous walk of the warehouse worker to the shelves to pack the orders together.
On average, customers would order six items from the drying area per order, says Knuspr, the new system can save 36 meters of walking distance per order.
According to Knuspr, the picking speed increased threefold after the automation.
Knuspr has invested six million euros
This frees up capacities – so that we can continue to grow.
The size of the facility is already impressive: the range in the warehouse in Garching cannot be compared with a Kramer store in Lower Bavaria.
There are a total of around 12,000 products here, part of which, dry goods, is managed by Autostore.
To date, 17,000 plastic crates have been used for this purpose.
Knuspr has invested around six million euros in the system.
Stand now.
Because the ordering capacity in Garching should continue to grow: Knuspr's goal is up to 6,000 orders per day.
The number of plastic boxes has already increased to 28,000.
However, there are two major hurdles when operating such a mega warehouse: "Best before date and the quality of fresh food," says Jens Andrä.
"It's really difficult."
