De Bijenkorf decided to create a new 32,159m2 central warehouse in Tilburg to supply its seven national stores, as well as e-commerce orders from The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, Germany, Austria and France.

It required an automated solution that offered a sortation capacity of up to 8,000 items per hour, and could handle both e-commerce multi-item and store orders. In total, the Tilburg warehouse will house 210,000 unique SKUs and more than three million items.

An omni-channel approach

To fulfil de Bijenkorf’s requirements, Vanderlande delivered its advanced AIRTRAX Pocket – the first large-scale system of its kind in The Netherlands. It is operated on de Bijenkorf’s behalf by Ingram Micro Commerce & Lifecycle Services, a leading provider of supply chain solutions.

AIRTRAX Pocket is an innovative and reliable solution for transporting, sequencing and storing hanging goods. It delivers unrivalled benefits throughout any kind of hanging goods handling operation and is designed to move significant volumes of goods efficiently.

This omni-channel solution supports three areas: B2C orders (online orders to consumers); B2B store orders storing ‘fast movers’; and the process of e-commerce returns There are approximately 48,000 pockets within the Tilburg system and around 35,000 of those are used primarily for storage.

An excellent result

Ingram Micro’s Business Unit Director, Maxim Hurkmans, has overall responsibility for the de Bijenkorf operation in Tilburg: “The solution has returned huge benefits in terms of reduced picking hours and increased productivity. In the end, both de Bijenkorf and Ingram Micro are very happy with the result.”

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