As one of Europe’s largest music retailers, Cologne Music Store GmbH has established a reputation among professional and hobby musicians during the last few years, and beyond Germany’s borders, especially in online-retail. A huge range of items and premium shipping service caused the company over proportional growth, which increased the requirements in logistics.

Objectives and requirements

• Consolidation of various storage sites into one central logistics centre
• Integration of a single retail shop, online business and building highlight
• High availability and short reaction times
• Handling of about 6,000 packages per day
• Variation of standard Euro-pallets for oversized goods
• Growth oriented

Customer benefits

• Direct interface to the goods-out area of the shop provides short waiting periods for customers
• Special handling of high-quality guitars – 1.2 meter (3.9 feet) packages in the mini-load warehouse
• Consideration of various goods sizes: from 250 mm (9.8 inches) to 1,300 mm (51 inches)
• Short paths, reduction of rearranging processes
• Acceleration of shipping pace
• Reduction of error rate
• Possible enhancement of stock

Solution

The 24 metre pallet high bay rack stores almost 14,000 pallets with double-deep storage structure. Each of the six stacker cranes is equipped with one single-deep and one double-deep load handling device to increase the throughput rate.

The mini-load storage contains about 15,000 totes and cartons of various sizes. Two TGW Stratus stacker cranes with two Twister load handling devices each supply the 10 metre high double deep shelving rack. The mini-load picking takes place at pick-by-light workstations, which are supplied by six TGW Commissioner automatic storage systems. For the shipping process cartons are packed at one of the three pack lines and closed before the shipping tag is put on.