Renewal of the food stock in times of pandemic

Even more effi­cien­cy in logis­tics — this is now on the agen­da of the food dis­counter in Switzer­land Den­ner. The cen­tral ware­house in Mägen­wil AG has been mod­ern­ized in recent months with mod­ern automa­tion tech­nol­o­gy from Swiss­log. The ware­house is the ele­men­tary hub for sup­ply­ing over 250 Den­ner stores with gro­ceries and impor­tant house­hold prod­ucts. Despite Coro­na restric­tions and a tight sched­ule, all the work went accord­ing to plan.

It was an ambi­tious project: The mod­ern­iza­tion of the AG dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­ter in Mägen­wil, Can­ton Aar­gau. Now it has been suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed. Swiss­log AG from Buchs AG has equipped a high-bay food ware­house for hard goods with mod­ern automa­tion — in pan­dem­ic times, dur­ing ongo­ing oper­a­tions with con­stant­ly high capac­i­ty utilization.

“As a dis­counter, we are all about effi­cien­cy, while at the same time the demands on logis­tics are con­stant­ly increas­ing. Ensur­ing the avail­abil­i­ty of goods as well as fast and error-free deliv­ery to over 250 stores are deci­sive fac­tors for the project, while at the same time the con­ver­sion also offers added eco­log­i­cal val­ue,” explains Daniel Kindler, Head of the Mägen­wil dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­ter. “Since the new instal­la­tion has been in oper­a­tion, mate­r­i­al flows are more effi­cient and con­serve resources,” says Kindler.

Seamlessly coordinated processes

Swiss­log replaced twelve old­er pal­let stack­er cranes with mod­ern ones and installed new pal­let con­vey­or tech­nol­o­gy. In addi­tion, two new mez­za­nine lev­els were built. In the process, the avail­able time win­dow of only five months was very narrow.

“The chal­lenges were great. The Coro­na pro­tec­tion mea­sures demand­ed a lot from us and yet we man­aged to com­plete all the work with­in the specifications.”

- Mario Flo­ry, Project Manager

Part of securing the food supply

In order to dis­rupt oper­a­tions at Den­ner as lit­tle as pos­si­ble, Swiss­log under­took the mod­ern­iza­tion not only dur­ing shift times, but also at night and on week­ends. In addi­tion, the team worked in stages for major instal­la­tion measures.

Flo­ry explains, “To enable the removal of the stack­er cranes, about a quar­ter of the high-bay ware­house was emp­tied by plac­ing a par­tial assort­ment exter­nal­ly and pick­ing it there. Thus, we were able to remove 3 old stack­er cranes at once and install 3 new ones in 10 days.” After their instal­la­tion and soft­ware con­nec­tion, goods in the high-bay ware­house were relo­cat­ed so that the next shelf area became free. Swiss­log saved time for the ramp-up in real oper­a­tion through exten­sive tests in advance, on Sat­ur­days and Sundays.

Flo­ry con­cludes: “We are pleased that we were able to play our part in secur­ing the food sup­ply at Denner.