The REWE delivery service has opened a food fulfilment centre in Frankfurt. With the "Picking Loop" and "Pick by Light", it offers two technical innovations.
Customers' orders are picked and prepared for delivery by the company's own fleet of delivery vehicles with its own drivers on around 13,000 square metres of warehouse space. From the warehouse in Frankfurt-Rödelheim, deliveries are made to households in the city and neighbouring towns. "We are delighted to now be able to supply even more households in Frankfurt. We are starting at our new location with full-time drivers and a large fleet of vehicles. Frankfurt is an important location, and we very much appreciate the continuing demand from the people of Frankfurt," says Jan Bracken, Head of Operations at REWE Lieferservice.
At the Frankfurt Food Fulfilment Centre, a "picking loop" will be integrated into the existing delivery service system landscape for the first time: During the picking process, the delivery containers travel through eight different zones on a circular conveyor system. Within each zone, the bins are manually filled with items from neighbouring shelves. With around 800 items provided per cycle, the "picking loop" enables a reduction in search and run times within the picking process in the dry goods area. The loop is not the only technological innovation in REWE Lieferservice's latest manual FFC: the "Pick-by-Light" application has also been introduced and is being trialled for the first time in a long-term practical test. All shelves at the 13,000 square metre site are equipped with LED rails that communicate with employees during the picking process: The system uses the last item picked to determine the next item in the picking process and indicates the product location to the employee via light signals on the shelf. This enables faster and more direct selection of the required items as well as a noticeable increase in efficiency and simplification for employees.
Our film shows exactly how these technical innovations work.