Compact Twin boosts UK supplier

21/10/2019

Bunzl Retail Supplies is the UK’s leading supplier of goods not for resale, and their supply chain solutions has an extensive network of global suppliers across a broad and eclectic range of product categories to deliver a holistic solution for their customers.

A game changer

Bunzl Retail Supplies set out with the expectations that they needed a solution, that could pick a high volume of small skews, and they had to do it in large batches for batch efficiency. At the same time, they needed to be able to replenish the machine as efficiently as they could pick from it. Weland Solutions took all their requirements on board and delivered a solution of 4 compact twin vertical lifts with 96-put-to-light stations.

That allowed them to do picking to light, as well as replen-from-light. The replen-from-light is a game changer for Bunzl Retail Supplies. When you look at traditional vertical lifts, you must do some form of pre-sorting of the stock and it’s a very manual process to put that inventory inside the machine. Because they are using the put-to-light stations to do the replenishments as well, they get the same levels of efficiency for the replenishment as they are for the picking.

Performance improvement

The Compact Twin is the only vertical lift on the market that has a twin extractor, that means it can carry two trays at once. Due to that it means it can deliver he trays to the access opening consistently faster, which reduces the time an operative stands waiting for the trays, which essentially would be wasted otherwise. ” The results so far, are really exciting and it is great news to deliver back to the business. We are still only in our early stages of implementation, but we have already seen a performance increase”, Gareth Banks, Head of Operations at Bunzl Retail Supplies, explains.