Store fulfillment transformed into Omni-Channel fulfillment
WITRON Logistic + Informatik Gmbh, (Parkstein, Germany) was tasked with reconfiguring UK health and beauty retail giant, Boots’ existing Nottingham Store Service Center (SSC) into a fully functioning Omni-Channel fulfillment center in three weeks.
During the early stages of the COVID19 pandemic, Boots continued to see foot traffic in retail locations, which included in-store pick-ups from online ordering. As the UK entered full lockdown procedures, retail sales plummeted and direct-to-consumer shipping soared, forcing an on-the-fly adaptation of their SSC. Boots had been using an order management system for several months that was set up above the warehouse management system. WITRON IT experts “simply” redefined the SSC to a store – a huge store with a massive inventory in just 3 weeks. “We have never experienced anything like that – transforming a logistics center originally designed exclusively for store delivery into an omnichannel logistics center at record speed”, said Jack Kuypers, Vice President North-West Europe at WITRON.
“We have been working very well with WITRON for more than ten years, always coming up with new, creative processes,” said Alan Penhale, Supply Chain Director at Boots. “I am surprised that we managed to ship over 6,000 online orders per day. It is top class what we have achieved together during the crisis.”
lan Penhale, Supply Chain Director at Boots is responsible for the supply chain of more than 2,300 stores in the United Kingdom and The Republic of Ireland. Alan’s team also picks and packs orders for the health and beauty retailer’s online business.
After the start of the Coronavirus Pandemic in just three weeks, the Boots and WITRON teams converted the processes in their main automated warehouse from store logistics to e-commerce logistics. Thus, the Store Service Center (SSC) in Nottingham, UK not has delivered proven high performance, but also its ability to be able to adapt to rapidly changing conditions. The SSC supplies millions of units a day for store delivery from a range of 37,000 different items, and now the SSC is also supporting the Boots online business.
Boots recorded 150+ percent more orders in its online business in the months of the pandemic with customers choosing to order online during the lockdown. Boots operates its own e-commerce logistics center and the challenge was being able to adapt to these rapidly increasing order numbers. A solution was needed – not in a few years, but immediately!
Part of the solution was the Store Service Center (SSC) in Nottingham, designed and realized by WITRON. “Here we still had logistics capacities available. At the beginning of the pandemic, customers were still shopping in the stores, but during the lockdown, e-commerce figures increased as store footfall declined” Penhale and his team ship beauty products, cosmetics, perfumes, healthcare items, and even Coca Cola; more than 37,000 products!
“Boots needed a creative solution in spring of 2020”, reports Jack Kuypers, Vice President North-West Europe at WITRON. Boots and WITRON have been working together successfully for more than 10 years. The leading pharmacy-led health and beauty retailer is one of the largest retailers in the UK and together the teams have optimized processes for stores in the past. “We have never experienced anything like that – transforming a logistics center originally designed exclusively for store delivery into an omnichannel logistics center at record speed”, Kuypers admits.
Store or online customer?
Your response: The SSC become a store. In the past, many customers ordered their goods online but picked them up in the local store, and often picking still took place in the store. Click + collect was the solution to the pandemic. Boots has been using an order management system for several months that is set up above the warehouse management system. IT experts “simply” redefined the SSC to a store – admittedly a huge store with a lot of storage capacity.
“Whether employees pick goods manually in the store in London or with the Dynamic Picking System (DPS)”, the software doesn’t care,” Penhale laughs.
The heart of the system is and remains the DPS with its 252 workstations. The highly dynamic and automated picking of small parts in DPS is supported by a pick-by-light system. The DPS works according to both, the goods-to-person and the person-to-goods principle. Depending on the order structure, the items are arranged in the pick front either permanently or on-demand, such that the picking process is optimized at all times. The DPS supports different types of order picking: From tote into tote, from pallet into tote, from tote into the shipping carton, etc. Regardless of the picking type, the picker is always guided by a pick-by-light system. Large-volume items from the Boots assortment in the SSC are picked by radio data supported and route-optimized by the semi-automated Car Picking System (CPS) onto roll containers. In total, Boots colleagues in Nottingham pick almost 3 million units on a peak day. “Our colleagues don’t even know whether they are picking for the e-commerce customer or for the store”, Penhale reports.
But the teams of WITRON and Boots still had to make some physical changes in the SSC. The logistics specialists built a new shipping area for the e-commerce orders. “At the moment, this area is still supplied manually. But we want to establish automation here in the near future as well”, explains the supply chain director. And another idea is the concept of picking orders to be sent to the stores for them to pack for customers. “We currently don’t have a system solution for this, but we will work on it together”. It is an option for the future.
Within three weeks (!), the store logistics center transformed into an omnichannel warehouse. Did that surprise him? “No, we have been working very well with WITRON for more than ten years, always coming up with new, creative processes. I am surprised that we managed to ship over 6,000 online orders per day. It is top class what we have achieved together during the crisis.”
The pandemic isn’t over yet, but Penhale ventures a look into the future. “Yes, people are shopping in stores again, but e-commerce will continue to grow. Cost-efficient and flexible omnichannel processes, as well as the supply of different distribution channels from one logistics center, will become a “must-have”. It is essential to align all logistics processes in the supply chain “end-to-end” to a holistic omnichannel structure. We are working on this together with WITRON.”
