Fiege and ESPRIT

On behalf of Fiege as a logistics service provider, Blohm Consulting has very successfully developed and implemented a very complex SAP LE system for the new ESPRIT Distribution Center Europe in Mönchengladbach.

The Distribution Center has a floor area of 30,000 square meters, 3 levels and is highly automated. The goods are stored, conveyed and processed at automated workstations on 23 km of conveyor technology and with several automatic, double-deep carton warehouses with over 250,000 storage locations.
The cartons are capped, labeled and conveyed directly to shipping on automatic shipping lines.
The DCE has a capacity of 150 million dispatched parts per year.
Blohm Consulting was solely responsible for developing the warehouse management system and the LE processes.

• Process design
• Rough and detailed concept
• SAP project planning and tracking
• Realization
• Implementation and support

The SAP LE/WM system is based on SAP AFS, WMS and LE functions.

The SAP standard system as a basis was supplemented by numerous in-house developed functionalities and perfectly tailored to the highly complex requirements and processes of this distribution center. Only SAP standard modules are used and the system is completely modification-free. It was designed to be extremely flexible; all functions can be set and configured via the company's own customizing and are therefore future-proof and transferable to new requirements.

Due to its size and complexity, the conveyor technology has its own material flow computer, but here we deliberately chose to divide the tasks between the WMS and MFR so that the business logic lies solely in the WMS. All resources (workstations, areas) are subject to our own resource control; only the WMS knows the flexibly assignable tasks of the workstations. They can be switched on and off in the WMS, just like the materials handling resources such as storage and retrieval machines, dispatch lines, etc.
The WMS determines the conveying objectives of a carton and tracks these. This means that in the event of changes, new processes, etc., new settings and, if necessary, developments only have to be made in the WMS, which reduces risk and streamlines the development and testing processes.

The collaboration with colleagues from MFR and PLC development was very close and cooperative.

• EDI connection ESPRIT ERP and forwarders
• Automatic goods receipt measuring tunnel
• Automatic receipt via barcodes
• Transportation planning, shipment creation
• Gate and shipping lane management for CEP and forwarding shipments
• Complex storage and retrieval strategies (single and double deep mixed)
• Case Calculation: (shipping carton pre-calculation with special customer-specific packaging, sorting and separation rules)
• Batch formation: mathematically optimized compilation of a picking batch from shipping cartons for both automatic and manual processes
• Picking at automatically connected workstations, with integration of checkout scanners and pick-to-light systems, web screen functions on touch screens
• Dynamic route determination for cartons on the conveyor system, including reporting point management
  Extensive WMS-MFR real-time communication (six-digit number per hour)
• Automatic dispatch functions (capping, strapping, labels, papers)
• Value-Added Services (VAS)
• Picking (manual) of pallets according to the multi-order procedure with warehouse radio frequency
• Integration of various warehouse radio terminals (wrist, handheld) for picking, palletizing, etc.
• Stacker / RF : Dynamic queue management according to priorities and tasks