Voila! Novel storage for the Web

France's second largest book distributor, Interforum, handles Internet and traditional orders with a little known but proven storage system.

By -- Modern Materials Handling, 6/1/2000

Managers at Interforum wish every book was at the top of the best seller list. That way, France's second largest book distributor could work on a pallet in/pallet out basis. But that scenario is as much a fiction as many of the 100,000 titles that the company stocks.

Instead, the Malesherbes, France based distribution center must deal in pallet loads, cases, partial cases, and eaches when picking and shipping orders for book stores and schools. And from all indications, eaches are destined to become even more of a factor in the future as Interforum builds its Web business.

In a typical day, the DC picks and ships about 300,000 books to fill 3,500 orders. Only about 2%, or less than 100, of those orders are generated by Interforum's Web site at this point. However, that number is expected to hit 1,000 orders a day by the end of this year as e-commerce begins to catch on in Europe.

Interforum has set a high performance bar for itself. Its service level is already at 99%. Shipment errors are only 0.03%. To accommodate the growth in orders while maintaining such high customer service levels, the company is doing something old and something new.

Last month, a new Web order processing center opened adjacent to the current facility. This allows Interforum to manage orderpicking separately for its Web and traditional businesses. However, all inventory will be stored in two automated storage and retrieval systems as in the past. The company expects this arrangement will give it maximum order fulfillment flexibility and accuracy without adding unnecessary inventory management costs.

Receiving at the facility's 17 dock doors generally occurs between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. Generally, 1,000 pallet loads of general consumer books and school texts are received daily.

All loads are repalletized on slave pallets to ensure uniformity of loads for putaway in the storage systems. Bar codes are applied and read, linking the pallet and inventory for the warehouse management system (WMS) that runs the facility.

Under the direction of the WMS, pallets travel either by lift truck or short conveyor spur to a pickup station at one of the two automated storage systems. One was installed 6 years ago and has 30,000 locations while the other was completed last year and has 40,000 locations.

While automated, these unit load systems are not a traditional AS/RS design with racks on both sides of an aisle and a high-masted storage/ retrieval machine for putaway and retrieval. Instead, low-profile powered vehicles pickup the pallet load and travel on a closed loop rail network that accesses multiple levels each with many aisles and even more storage locations. All vehicles have access to all levels, aisles, and storage locations. Powered lifts located at the ends of the rack structures move vehicles between levels.

Both Interforum systems have 14 levels. In the original system, there are 12 aisles per level, and a total of 10 vehicles and four lifts to maximize throughput. The new system has 16 aisles per level, six vehicles, and two lifts.

When the lift arrives at the designated level, the vehicle moves into the aisle and travels to the pre-selected storage location. Storage is one pallet deep on both sides of the aisle. The vehicle's shuttle mechanism moves the pallet into the selected storage position. From there, the central control system directs the vehicle to retrieve a stored load or back to the original input station to pickup and putaway its next load.

While designed and built for Interforum and other European companies by Savoye Logistics of France, the Access storage system has recently become available in the U.S. from Retrotech (www.retrotech.com, 716-924-6333 ).

Retrieved loads are carried by lift truck to either the traditional or Web picking areas. At presstime, startup of the Web order fulfillment building was still underway and few details on its operation were available. The company does expect to begin with manual orderpicking and move to an automated system by the end of the year when orders exceed 1,000 a day.

In the main facility, the WMS directs the driver to the slow, medium, or fast moving areas for replenishment of picking positions. Slow movers, those titles which ship only 1 or 2 books a week, are placed on shelves. Medium movers, a pallet load a week, are in flow racks. And fast movers, everything else, are floor stored for maximum access.

The WMS directs picking. For orders with less than full case picks, a carton size is designated and bar coded. The carton then travels by conveyor to all pick locations needed to fill that order. After cartons are weighed and sealed, they are sorted along with full case picks for palletization and delivery to the staging area for order consolidation. Most days, 1,000 pallets of books are loaded on over-the-road trucks for delivery to customers.