CUSTOMER CASE STUDY—
Automation ensures optimum freshness through minimal handling time
A family-run chain of supermarkets, Mercadona is Spain’s market leader in the grocery retail sector. Founded in 1977, the group has over 1,600 stores located across Spain and employs some 76,000 staff to serve 5 million Spanish households.
The automated solution improves efficiency and picking accuracy, bringing benefits to our customers in terms of product freshness and availability on the shelves.
Head of Logistics and Purchasing (Fruit and Vegetables), Mercadona, Spain
The challenge of a warehouse
To meet sustained growth, Mercadona needed to add a further warehouse to its network of distribution centers. For the new DC in Guadix, Granada, the company decided to invest in robotic automation for the handling of its fresh produce.
In Mercadona’s corporate philosophy, customer satisfaction is paramount, with the consumer referred to as ‘el jefe’ (the boss). The objective at Guadix was to minimize handling times in order to maximize product freshness for consumers, as well as the shelf life – or sales window – for fresh produce.
Mercadona boasts a history of innovation.
1982 1st Spanish company to use barcode scanners at the point of sale.
1988 1st fully automated distribution center in Spain.
2003 1st to carry out an Ethical Audit.
The solution for warehouse automation
The new DC was designed to handle some 6,000 stock-keeping units (SKUs) and shift more than 100,000m3 of merchandise per month. The facility features zones for various product types – one for dry produce; two for refrigerated products, at temperatures of 3ºC and 12ºC; one for frozen products at -23ºC; and a production area for bread.
Cimcorp robots were specified to automate the picking of full crates of fresh fruit, vegetables and meat in the refrigerated zones, where around 300 different SKUs are handled in some 30,000 crates each day.
In addition to the robotic system, Cimcorp supplied the crate stackers, the conveyor system and its Warehouse Control System (WCS) to manage the material flows, as well as provided installation and start-up services.
Overhead gantries managing flexible operation
The robotic solution at Guadix features eight of Cimcorp’s MultiPick® robots that operate on overhead gantries to combine buffer storage and order picking functions into one flexible operation. The robots handle perishable goods in plastic crates within the +3°C and +12°C temperature zones.
Although fully integrated with the surrounding manual operations, the system is effectively an island of automation that prepares orders for retail stores, enabling them to be transported to the supermarkets without the need for any further processing. With product pallets going in and store pallets coming out, the island is self-sufficient – taking care of goods reception; put-away; location of stored items; retrieval planning; picking of crates; sorting and assembly of crates into discrete orders; and loading of the orders onto transport units ready for delivery.
Up to 30,000 crates per day are stored by the robots and up to 28,675 crates are picked in a six-hour period to replenish the supermarkets. The 300 SKUs are handled in one of two sizes of plastic crate that can weigh 5–250kg, with a maximum stack height of 2.2m.
Automation benefits and results
The lead time from order to handover at the Guadix DC was just eight months, so Mercadona began to reap the benefits of its investment quickly. The company was so pleased with the solution that it ordered a further system from Cimcorp for another of its sites.
Enhanced freshness and longer shelf life result from the very fast order processing. This is a key benefit for perishable products that have limited sales windows. The automation allows Mercadona to have all store orders ready for delivery to the supermarkets in just six hours.
Picking accuracy and customization – the robotic system ensures accurate order picking and enables Mercadona to set its own picking criteria and implement them consistently. This might include, for example, the placement of heavy products at the bottom of crate stacks, or taking into account expiry date or production batch.
Full tracking and tracing is possible throughout the island of automation, with all
movements of goods being communicated to the host system without the need for barcodes or RFID tags.
Strain free handling was another important benefit for Mercadona. The company takes employee welfare very seriously, as evidenced by the fact that all of its staff have permanent contracts. In choosing the Cimcorp solution, the company sought to protect its staff from strenuous work and the risk of injury.
Greater flexibility is provided through the high level of redundancy of the robotic solution; this allows Mercadona to adapt its operations to meet daily, weekly, monthly and seasonal uctuations in the most economic way.
Hygienic cleaning is simple, as the robots are able to empty the entire floor-based storage area fully automatically.
About Mercadona
Mercadona is a leading grocery retailer in Spain and Portugal with a turnover of over 31 billion Euros. The company has 1,626 stores and 99,000 employees across Spain, with a further 44 stores and 3,500 staff in Portugal. Cimcorp co-innovated the automated intralogistics systems with the Spanish grocery giant for five distribution centers. The deal was part of Mercadona’s strategic efforts to drive sustainable transformation in the food supply chain with intralogistics automation. Mercadona Supermercados
