News

Fifth extension for New Look by psb

In order to be well prepared for the constant growth of the company’s business, the British fashion retailer New Look placed an order with psb for the fifth extension of its materials handling installation. When this extension will be completed, it will be possible to pick daily more than a million flat-packed and hanging units for being shipped to more than a thousand stores across the world, plus a quarter million items for the company’s mail order business.

Nine psb AS/RS stacker cranes type sprinter will be employed; each of these cranes will be equipped with two double-deep psb optimizer load handling devices. Thus, four totes, of any size, can be stored in and out per travel. The new replenishment warehouse will have a capacity of more than six million flat-packed items. Automated order picking will be carried out by 14 high performance psb rotapick systems, each with a picking rate of up to 1,500 items per hour. Another challenge of the project is the seamless integration of this fifth extension into the existing system installation.

A seamless connection between the existing and the new areas is realized also in the overhead transport sector. psb will employ its proven trolley-less conveyor technology, as slide tracks for hangers and grid conveyors. The final sortation, according to the individual end customers, of the goods to be shipped will be done via a cross belt sorter, which will be completely integrated by psb.

In the design phase, great emphasis was put on a high degree of redundancy: the sub-areas of the system were designed bifunctionally, so that the new installation can be utilized for both, mail order business and store retailing. This puts New Look in a position to respond to the different requirements and to plan the capacities for both areas with respect to the daily demands.

The installation will be controlled by the psb WCS/WMS selektron software system. The WMS manages the existing and the newly integrated sectors and optimizes the operations of the entire material flow in the warehouse, with respect to the capacity utilization as well as the utilization of the resources for the different sales channels. psb’s single supplier strategy offers many synergic effects, e.g. for a common warehousing operation and the »call on demand« for store retailing or mail order business.