Paper mills Pichon, a distributor of school supplies and already a Savoye customer since the 90’s, has done a detailed study of the market and has executed an extensive request for quotation process, but has chosen again for their historic partner to accompany them on the path of modernization of their soon highly automated site in Veauche, France.
Paper mills Pichon supplies 40% of all the kindergarten and primary schools in France at the beginning of the school year. As the specialist in school supplies, the company faces a very strong seasonality as 80% of their turnover is achieved in 3 months: « The handling of these peaks is very complex, not only from a management point of view: From 30 operators in logistics, we go to 230 during summer, but also for the customer satisfaction: they become more and more demanding on the delivery times. Therefore we are forced to have a higher reactivity and productivity », explains Thierry CAPPE, Managing Director of Paper mills Pichon.
Double the productivity during order preparation
To establish a capacity gain, the company has decided to modernize its future site in Veauche, where the works started in July 2018. The distribution center has to be operational in 2020 with 18 000 m² of warehouse and 3 600 m² of office space. The announced objectives for the new building and its installations: double the productivity of the order picking process, have a better scalability and enhance the reliability of the processes. For this purpose, the distributor has chosen again for his long-term partner, the designer and integrator of logistic solutions, Savoye. They will be in charge of the supply of this complete and highly mechanized solution for light and also for heavy loads. For the handling of the light loads, a high speed, shuttle based, Goods-to-person INTELIS PTS system with 40 000 locations will be installed. « INTELIS PTS is amongst the most perfomant solutions in the market in terms of production capacity. The system is as efficient as the classic miniload solution. », points Thierry CAPPE out.
The MAGMATIC®, shuttle based ASRS for the storage of pallets, has been chosen to handle the heavy loads: with a storage capacity of 13 000 pallets, the solution consists of 2 elevators Levmatic who will take care of the vertical movements of the 5 independent vehicles for the pallet moves. There will also be 2 pallets stackers and unstackers.
Finally for the automatisation of the packing process, there will be 2 case erectors type Pac 600 and 2 closing machines Intelis Jivaro, which adapt the height of the box to its filling rate to be able to ship the lowest volume possible to its customers.
A match between man, equipment and know how
This installation is part of a global project for the redesign of the logistics in which every actor has had the possibility to prove its confidence and its implication. « The Savoye offering matches clearly with our sector and corresponds perfectly to our needs. From the start, Savoye has been able to offer us the best advice on how to optimize the use of the space within the warehouse. They will, therefore, accompany us during the entire project», concludes Thierry CAPPE.