Endress+Hauser expands logistics capacity

Endress+Hauser is strength­en­ing its logis­tics capa­bil­i­ties in Europe. Busi­ness part­ner Hell­mann World­wide Logis­tics will oper­ate a mod­ern, high-per­for­mance logis­tics cen­ter on behalf of the Group in Wörrstadt, Ger­many near Frank­furt Air­port. The hub is sched­uled to be com­plet­ed and in oper­a­tion by mid-2021. The new loca­tion will replace the cur­rent logis­tics cen­ter in Nieder-Olm, Germany.

In order to smooth­ly ful­fill cus­tomer orders and ensure a high lev­el of cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion, a reli­able logis­tics sys­tem is a cru­cial link in the chain. Fast through­put times, a quick response and on-time deliv­ery are just a few of the demands placed on mod­ern prod­uct dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­ters. Dur­ing the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, anoth­er aspect turned out to be espe­cial­ly impor­tant: flexibility.

“In order to reli­ably sup­ply cus­tomers around the world with mea­sure­ment and automa­tion tech­nol­o­gy despite the pan­dem­ic, our logis­tics hub in Nieder-Olm served as a sol­id foun­da­tion,” says Oliv­er Blum, Cor­po­rate Direc­tor of Sup­ply Chain. “Although 100 per­cent avail­abil­i­ty was cru­cial, hav­ing the flex­i­bil­i­ty to keep thou­sands of mea­sure­ment instru­ments from being deliv­ered to cus­tomers that were in lock­down was par­tic­u­lar­ly important.”

This pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence served as fur­ther con­fir­ma­tion of the suc­cess­ful coop­er­a­tion with Hell­mann World­wide Logis­tics, which was recent­ly renewed with a new con­tract. The part­ners also want to put a larg­er logis­tics cen­ter in Wörrstadt into oper­a­tion only a few kilo­me­ters from the cur­rent loca­tion. The new hub, sit­u­at­ed at the junc­tion of the A63 high­way and state road B420 in Hes­sen, will fea­ture more than 18,000 square meters of logis­tics space and can han­dle eight times the vol­ume of the old facility.

“With Hell­mann, we’re pleased to have a part­ner on our side that can flex­i­bly and reli­ably sup­port our growth in the future,” empha­sized Oliv­er Blum. Volk­er Sauer­born, COO Con­tract Logis­tics at Hell­mann World­wide Logis­tics, said: “We’re pleased to be able to fur­ther expand the out­stand­ing coop­er­a­tion with Endress+Hauser and bring it to a new lev­el in the new halls. The Wörrstadt loca­tion will enable strate­gic growth for both partners.”

Today the cen­ter in Nieder-Olm, which is cer­ti­fied for air car­go secu­ri­ty, man­ages dai­ly deliv­er­ies from 16 shut­tle trucks from all Endress+Hauser Euro­pean pro­duc­tion sites. At the logis­tics cen­ter, the var­i­ous prod­ucts are bun­dled into a sin­gle order and shipped to nation­al and inter­na­tion­al end customers.

Hell­mann also man­ages replen­ish­ments for the Endress+Hauser prod­uct cen­ters out­side of Europe, which includes pack­ag­ing and prepar­ing the orders for ship­ment via air car­go and load­ing con­tain­er ships. The new logis­tics hub in Wörrstadt will also bun­dle inbound orders from over­seas loca­tions and dis­trib­ute them to the Euro­pean pro­duc­tion sites via the exist­ing shut­tle connections.

The space at the new loca­tion will also pri­mar­i­ly be used for cross dock­ing logis­tics, which involves prod­ucts that are nor­mal­ly shipped direct­ly from the man­u­fac­tur­er to the cus­tomer instead of being ware­housed. “We also use this con­cept at our oth­er Endress+Hauser logis­tics cen­ters around the world: in France, India, Italy and the USA. And we are con­tin­u­ous­ly strength­en­ing our world­wide net­work. We are cur­rent­ly build­ing region­al hubs in Chi­na and India,” added Oliv­er Blum.

The con­struc­tion activ­i­ties are already well under­way in Wörrstadt. The part­ners offi­cial­ly kicked off con­struc­tion of the new logis­tics cen­ter with a ground-break­ing cer­e­mo­ny. The project devel­op­er is Panat­toni, a sub­sidiary of a world­wide lead­ing real-estate com­pa­ny that spe­cial­izes in logis­tics and indus­tri­al prop­er­ties. LIST Bau Biele­feld is the prime contractor.