Sorter upgraded to keep up with rising throughput

Ingram Micro Commerce & Lifecycle Services in the Netherlands takes care of the logistics processes for Dutch e-commerce retailers like bol.com, de Bijenkorf and the Ajax fanshop. Its warehouse will be expanded with a Slide tray sorter LR. This sorter helps them to process the hundreds of thousands of orders per day during the holiday season.

Florian Broerse, logistics engineer at Ingram Micro CLS says: “Together with our customers, we come up with clever solutions to support their growth. We have a wide experience in third party logistics and ensure the daily shipment of hundreds of thousands e-commerce orders.”

To efficiently handle these orders, Ingram Micro CLS currently uses two Equinox sorters in its warehouse. The partnership between Ingram Micro CLS and Equinox started ten years ago with the installation of the first sorter. This Split tray sorter is used to sort various types of parcels and envelopes. The installation was later expanded with a slide tray sorter, which is used as an inbound sorter and handles eCommerce products. This includes items like keyboards, books, DVDs and toys.

Florian continues: “bol.com expects a significant raise in inbound shipments leading up to Black Friday and Christmas. In order to meet their expectations, we turned to Equinox for a solution. The biggest challenge in this project was the short delivery time. We needed the sorter within 5 months after the signing of the contract. The biggest challenge in this project was the short delivery time. The sorter had to be installed in a few months.”

The first concept included the upgrade and move of an existing Slide tray sorter. This would prolong the system lifetime with a few years. However, it soon became clear that a new Slide tray sorter LR was a viable alternative.

“By installing a new machine on the new location instead of moving the existing one, we have eliminated the downtime during the installation,” Florian Broerse says. “The existing slide tray sorter can still be used while the new slide tray sorter LR is being installed. We realised that this option saves us three weeks of downtime. The solution therefore enables us to guarantee a continuous process. Additionally, the slide tray sorter LR provides other benefits such as its compact design. This provides more space for additional processing solutions.”

With the slide tray sorter LR, Equinox was able to meet this challenging deadline. This modular sorter will be installed before Black Friday.