Picks up to 7,000 SKUs
The Tuko Logistics Cooperative is located in Kerava, Finland and serves 40 wholesale stores, 1,000 grocery stores and 5,000 institutional kitchens daily.
Tuko has installed Cimcorp gantry robot automation. The automatic goods-to-person storage and retrieval system is used to pick the majority about 70% of the orders for the SKUs in Tuko’s ambient storerooms.
Goods-to-person storage and retrieval systems are well suited for products with low volumes that are not delivered by the crate, but instead a few items at a time. Plastic totes are used as intermediate storage for the goods and the Cimcorp 3D Shuttle enables the retrieval of any one tote in floor-based storage. The result is up to six times more efficient order fulfilment compared to conventional voice-controlled picking, says the company.
The system makes full use of the floor space allocated for it. No storage racks or forklift aisles are necessary.
“We can choose which pallets we want to unload into the plastic totes in automatic storage. Right now we use it to store the slow-movers, which number about 7,000 individual SKUs and a total of 50,000 plastic totes,” says Kaarlo Svensson, director of logistics at Tuko.
The Cimcorp 3D Shuttle robots allow the products to come to the picker not vice versa, as is the case for conventional voice-controlled picking. Automation speeds up picking and reduces the man-hours needed. Barcode readers and weighing machines make sure logistics personnel know exactly what products and SKUs are contained in each tote and where in storage these totes reside. Bottlenecks are eliminated from the picking process.
“This investment will pay for itself,” concludes Svensson.
