From a new central distribution center, Sinn Leffers, one of Germany's biggest textile retailers, distributes clothing goods faster, more reliably, and more efficiently than it had previously from scattered DCs. From its strategic location in Venlo in The Netherlands, Sinn Leffers supplies its own 46 clothing shops plus a large number of shops owned by others. Thirty million items are distributed a year through this facility.

The Venlo facility is designed to stage and store non-hanging textile goods. Annually, some 240,000 stockkeeping units go to 110 different shops. Storage/staging is split among three areas at the site: a pallet warehouse, a mini-load automated storage and retrieval system, and a storage rack warehouse.

A warehouse management system determines where each product goes among the three areas or if it can be cross docked directly to order selectors. The WMS must also make slotting decisions by whether an item is a "push" or a "pull" product.

Push products - such as new articles or new items for the beginning of a fashion season – are usually held in pallet storage. Pull products are current items that shopkeepers can reorder. Most pull products are in the mini-load except for some really fast movers.

Order picking is split between "ready" products, or items which only need to be picked, and items which need to be priced and labeled.

The WMS instructs which ready products need to be pulled from storage and sent to a tilt-tray sorter. Full cases come from pallet storage and bins or trays of picked items come from the mini-load. Goods from storage racks also arrive in bins after manual picking.

At the tilt-tray sorter, bins and boxes are emptied. Then the sorter sends the emptied items to one of 110 spurs (one for each shop). From the spurs the items go to shipping.

Items that need to be priced and labeled go to one of 15 production lanes on a mezzanine floor for these steps. The WMS instructs operators on which price tags and labels to add to items and into which bin they must go.

Vanderlande Industries
770-250-2800
www.vanderlande.com