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In May the first edition of Intralogistica
Italia took place in Milan. During the
show, events and conferences were
organized in cooperation with experts
from the material handling industry
to give a market update and trends
in Italy. Fives’ Intralogistics team in
Italy attended the event to promote
solutions for e-commerce. The team
focused on in-house solutions to
meet both the strategic and economic
challenges of companies that operate
centres for the order fulfillment and
distribution of orders generated
through ecommerce platforms.
Fives recently carried out a study on
the double impact of the e-commerce
boom on the business of companies
selling their products online, who need
to adapt their order fulfillment process
in their own logistics terminals quickly.
The study also covered the impact of
this boom on the postal and express
courier operators which deliver the
purchased order to the end consumer.
The outcome of this market survey is
that Italy is still taking the first steps in
the e-commerce world compared with
other major European countries, with
an annual growth rate of 12%. In 2014,
the sales of e-commerce items reached
€7 billion in Italy, as against €60
billion in the UK. Italy has 16 million
eshoppers, while in France there are
30 million and 62 million in Germany.
Nevertheless, there are still very few
companies selling only through the
web in Italy. This is particularly true
in the fashion industry, where some
Italian manufacturers have launched
their onlineshopping platform in
combination with the retail distribution
through their traditional points of sale;
these companies are managing the
order fulfillment operations internally
or outsourcing them to external service
providers.
During the conferences, Fives focused
on the main challenges of e-commerce
applications: unpredictable item flows,
handling a high number of SKUs to
maintain stock availability, rapidity in
order fulfillment to get orders ready for
shipping within just a few hours of the
online purchase, returns management,
and the necessity to reduce costs
in order to be able to keep offering
competitive prices to the online
shoppers.
Fives has researched and designed
automation solutions that are reliable
and provide outstandingperformance.
The solutions are based on innovative
technologies to help customers facing
the changes of this fast-growing market
with flexible material handling systems
that are always adaptable to cope with
future needs.
During one of the conferences, Mr.
Bielli, Fives Intralogistics SpA Sales
and Marketing Manager, detailed the
typical order fulfillment process inside
a distribution centre equipped with
an automated sorting system. He also
pointed out the advantages of Fives’
cross-belt technology which enables
customers to handle a wide range of
items with different shape, size and
weight. He presented the Dispeo
reference, a 3PL subsidiary of 3Suisses
International group.
3SI Group is France, Belgium and
Spain’s leading private operator in
e-commerce services and is a wholly-
owned member of Germany’s Otto
Group, the second largest online
retailer. As a subsidiary, Dispeo
was specifically designed to
offer order fulfillment for online
retailers. Its mission is to meet
the essential needs of the
e-commerce industry.
Located near Lille in the
north of France, its hub
spans 145,000m
2
with
3 major warehouses.
It is operational 6
days a week and
can process an
average of 80
million items
per year, i.e.
150,000
parcels
every
day.
Dispeo has developed a comprehensive
collection of services, covering the full
range of needs within the supply chain:
international transport from supply
sources, goods reception and quality
control, warehousing, order picking,
order fulfillment and customers’ returns
processing. The sorting system for order
fulfillment Fives supplied includes twin
cross-belt sorters for flat garments and
boxes. Each belt’s throughput is over
13,000 items/h to 512 destinations.
Thanks to Fives’ high capacity sorting
system, Dispeo can now have an order
fulfilled within two hours from the online
purchase.
Items coming from the picking warehouse
are transferred to the sorter through
the high capacity induction lines and
sorted into destination 4-level chutes
automatically. The overlapping multilevel
chutes were specifically designed
for Dispeo, enabling a very high
concentration of destinations in a compact
space. Once the order is assembled by
the sorter fully automatically, the operator
serving the outlet just has to place it on
a belt conveyor that transports the order
to the automatic packaging system, and
then to the shipping area.
Ultimate solutions for
e-commerce distributors
40
Logistics Business Magazine | September 2015
WAREHOUSE AUTOMATION