With a customized Autostore system including new peripheral solutions, the German multichannel retailer Sport Conrad is increasing its efficiency and equipping itself for the future. With 16 robots and around 16,000 bins, the system from global Autostore partner and worldwide intralogistics specialist Kardex is helping Sport Conrad’s warehouse in lffeldorf in southern Germany handle the increasing volume of orders reliably.
At typical peak times, such as in the weeks before Christmas, some employees in the Sport Conrad warehouse used to walk up to 38 kilometers per day. Since August 2023, an automated storage and picking system from Kardex Autostore has taken over a large part of the previously purely manual work and minimized travel times. In Sport Conrad’s 4,700 square meter logistics center, the existing volume is now used optimally, as the system offers four times the storage space in the same area. A total of 16,000 containers with a storage volume of 1,500 cubic meters are transported by 16 ultra-modern robots and managed by the controller. Ten robots consume just as much energy per hour as a standard vacuum cleaner.
The electricity for the Autostore system is supplied by the photovoltaic system installed on the warehouse’s roof, while Sport Conrad feeds any surplus electricity into the local power grid. Robots automatically transport the goods to the ergonomically designed conveyor or carousel ports during order picking. The system is supplemented by two new transfer ports for storage and retrieval as well as a folding carton erector and a volume reducer, which ensures better utilization of the parcel service providers’ vehicles thanks to optimized package sizes, thereby reducing the environmental impact and speeding up delivery times.
