Omnichannel solution for Danone's logistics operations

Just 25 km from Madrid, Spain, in the town of Valdemoro, sits one of the distribution centres of Danone, a food multinational present in over 130 countries.

This 4,000 m² facility is designed to store Danone’s specialised children’s and medical nutrition products.

As an omnichannel warehouse, it manages orders sent to retailers, wholesalers and customers who have placed online orders via the website. Its operations are complex, and it has a high number of SKUs.

Mecalux was tasked with optimising the operations of the already existing facility. To do so, it has installed the Easy WMS warehouse management system, which increases worker productivity and controls all stock.

The centre is divided into three zones:

• A clad-rack warehouse with a trilateral forklift, a picking area, and a zone for special and delicate goods.
• In the picking area, operators prepare orders directly from the pallets on the lowest level of the racking. As the reserve products are housed directly above them, replenishment is very quick.
• The zone reserved for special and delicate items mainly houses products for hospitals and chemists. These types of goods require strict monitoring that guarantees their traceability across the supply chain. For this reason, the boxes containing these orders must be marked with a blue label from the Spanish Ministry of Health specifying the composition of the products in detail.

The WMS intervenes in all operations: goods receipt, storage location assignment, order picking and dispatch. The WMS also ensures the traceability of the products, from the time they enter the facility through to their delivery to customers.

Operators individually identify items as they arrive at the warehouse with the help of RF scanners. Using these devices, the employees receive orders and confirm their completion.

This agile system facilitates the work of the operators, significantly raising their throughput.

Once the product receipts have been processed, the workers store the goods following instructions from the WMS.

Distribution is turnover-based. Products with a higher demand are deposited directly in the picking area, while the rest are stored on the racks managed with the trilateral forklift.

With all the products identified, Easy WMS controls the status of the stock as well as its location in real time. This information is vital for improving processes and, if necessary, blocking the exit of specific product batches.

Just as with goods entries, Easy WMS optimises the work of the operators in order picking. On the one hand, it shows them which products to pick from the racks and how many; on the other hand, it configures the best pick paths.

Additionally, the WMS calculates the number of boxes that make up each order and creates a label for each box.

To guarantee optimal management of online orders, Mecalux has installed its Multi Carrier Shipping module. This enables the WMS to communicate with the major transport agencies that distribute these types of orders.

Easy WMS works in SaaS mode, with high-performance servers in the cloud that ensure the excellent performance of the WMS, adapted to Danone’s volume of operations.

Easy WMS also makes it possible to query and analyse all the data it generates through the Supply Chain Analytics module.

Another particular feature of this centre is that it uses pallets rented from another company; therefore, Danone must keep track of all their movements. Easy WMS can then easily transmit this information to the company, since each pallet is identified.

The implementation of Easy WMS has helped Danone to benefit from an agile, flexible supply chain capable of adapting to changes. Thus, it can operate efficiently in today’s competitive market.