Feeding a Nation – RedMart West Fulfilment Centre, Singapore
Providing productivity, space efficiency, speed, and accuracy for online grocery fulfilment
Occupying 32,500 square metres (350,000 square feet), one of the largest logistics facilities in the country belongs to the biggest online grocery platform in Singapore – RedMart. RedMart is the online grocery service of e-commerce giant, Lazada, which serves all of Singapore.
RedMart’s West Fulfilment Centre is powered by market leading automation from Dematic to meet the increasing demand for online grocery shopping. The Dematic automated solution includes robotic shuttles, ergonomic high-speed pick stations, an intelligent conveying system, and a high-rate sortation system, all managed by a sophisticated software platform to make processes incredibly easy and efficient for pickers, packers, and management staff.
The online market for groceries had seen a growth rate of 300% since 2017, however with RedMart’s previous infrastructure and manual processes, it would not have been able to cost-effectively take advantage of this growth opportunity.
“Our previous model was no longer working for us as we continued to grow. To meet the demand of consumers when it comes to online grocery shopping, the old method of manually hand-picking an order to pack and send to customers was too time-consuming, inefficient, and low in productivity,” said Mr. Gerald Glauerdt, Co-Founder & Chief Logistics Officer at RedMart and Lazada. “We knew we needed to scale our model of operations up, and we needed to find a solutions provider who was highly experienced in warehouse and logistics automation. Dematic was chosen as they were able to provide us with highly customisable solutions that would bring us the productivity increases that we were looking for”.
One of the technologies Dematic has provided as part of the automated solution is the Dematic Multishuttle® system. Products are placed in totes, which are automatically stored in high-density racks by robotic shuttles. The Dematic Multishuttles automatically transport totes between storage locations and operator pick stations, eliminating the need for operators to travel and preventing them from picking the wrong product. These towering racks extend from floor to ceiling, maximising the storage density of the warehouse.
“The automated solution uses robotic shuttles to store and retrieve products automatically and deliver them to goods-to-person (GTP) workstations where operators can work up to 5 times faster than they were previously”, said Mr. Michael Bradshaw, Senior Regional Director, Sales & Solutions Development, Dematic. “This part of the solution covers a huge product range in a small footprint, with an extremely effective picking method. The shuttles are also used to automatically replenish pick locations allocated for faster moving products where we use light picking technology to direct the operators, making the picking process as fast and accurate as possible”.
Whenever there is an order to be fulfilled from the goods-to-person area, the Dematic Multishuttle system automatically retrieves totes containing the required items. Totes are retrieved in a specific sequence and conveyed to the GTP workstations where they are picked and placed into order containers. The operator stays in one place while items are delivered to their pick station automatically, increasing picking speeds and productivity by eliminating the need for the picker to walk around many aisles of shelving.
“This example of the GTP brings a highly productive solution in terms of processes, where a picker could now pick and pack 500 items in the same amount of time that it used to take us to pick and pack 100 items using the manual process,” said Mr. Glauerdt. “Dematic was able to offer this customised solution to help reduce the burden on our pickers, whilst boosting productivity and efficiency, helping us to meet the growing demand of online grocery shopping”.
For more information click here: https://www.dematic.com/en-us/insights/case-studies/redmart-online-grocery-fulfillment/
