Netrada (D)

E-commerce business continues to grow, with particularly high demands on the fashion industry in the areas of storage, order picking and dispatch.

Online shopping continues to enjoy increasing popularity, as confirmed by figures from the German E-commerce and Distance Selling Trade Association (bvh)

With sales in excess of 18 billion euros, online shopping now represents over 60% of mail order sales in Germany, an increase of around 18% when compared to the previous year. Similarly high growth is also being experienced in other European countries and in the growth regions of Asia, with fashion the most profitable product group. In conjunction with Europe's leading full-service provider for e-commerce solutions in the fashion industry, NETRADA Management GmbH, Wanzl has successfully completed a joint project for the development of an order picking trolley.

NETRADA currently has around 300 employees who are responsible for the storage and dispatch of goods from ten fashion partners at its logistics centre in Lehrte, Lower Saxony. End clients in 21 countries are served from Lehrte using a variety of carriers. Seasonal changes in the fashion industry and different client demands require a high degree of flexibility when it comes to arranging processes and adapting needs, resources and technology to market trends at short notice. As an entirely technical solution is not viable in these circumstances, the core goods-handling processes in Lehrte are performed manually. The focus is consistently on the automation of internal transport.

As a result of Wanzl and NETRADA's long-standing partnership, Wanzl is already working on the development of an order picking trolley to accommodate all product movements. This forms part of the planning stage for the entire system at the Lehrte site.

In order to keep space requirements for trolley pools low, and to achieve the maximum usability of all the equipment, NETRADA has elected to use Wanzl's customised NetCart solution. From the arrival of goods to picking and despatch, this order picking trolley performs all transport functions. The NetCart is capable of being adapted for a variety of transport requirements such as hanging textiles, shoes, flat goods, accessories and jewellery, and must be capable of loading these together. A ladder, installed on the trolley, allows high picking positions to be reached with ease. In addition to manual picking, the trolleys have also been optimised for

automated operation. Each of the three folding levels can be adjusted individually, with no set-up time. Furthermore, all trolleys have been equipped with RFID transponders to allow them to move over automated conveyor lines to their destination after being released by the picker. 
One aspect that has become clear, however, is that previous allocation problems caused by using various types of trolley are now a thing of the past. The smooth movement of Wanzl trolleys also means that trolleys can now be moved whilst loaded with sorted goods, without this having any effect on the sorting. Consequently, workers remain in their picking zones and there is no longer a need to wait for multi-level transport by fork-lift or lift during accumulation. 
Process quality and efficiency have already seen an improvement during the construction phase and were further optimised once the transport system was complete.