strategicinsight
BY DAVID MALONEY, SENIOR EDITOR
Not quite
lights out,
but pretty close
The central DC operated by Swiss grocer Migros
ships about 370,000 cartons a day with near-
perfect accuracy. And it’s all done by machines.
DC MANAGERS HAVE LONG DREAMED OF AUTOMATED
systems so sophisticated they can simply turn out the lights and
let the machines do all the work. The reality is that few facilities
have reached that point; in most cases, humans are still needed to
monitor the machines and make sure they’re performing as
intended. Yet there are some who are quite close to the goal of a
lights-out facility.
Take Migros, for instance.
Migros is the top grocery retailer in Switzerland, with over 600
stores dotting the Swiss landscape. These stores vary considerably in size and items carried, but many resemble convenience stores more than the large super-stores familiar to U.S. shoppers. As is common in Europe, these stores are designed to get people in and out quickly, reflecting European shoppers’ tendency to make frequent trips to pick
up just a few items. Given the challenges posed by variable store size, fluctuating orders, and
limited room at the retail stores to hold buffer stock, Migros needs a distribution system that’s
flexible and responsive.
The hub of the company’s distribution activity is a large facility in Suhr, Switzerland, from
which dry grocery items are distributed to all of the stores. In 2002, Migros installed a semiau-tomated system from Witron at the site. This system proved to be a huge improvement over the
previous manual systems, and it showed Migros what automation could do.
The company took things a step further in 2011, when Migros installed Witron’s sophisticated OPM (Order Picking Machinery) system, an almost completely automated solution.
The new system, which incorporates Witron’s COM (Case Order Machine) technology, is
designed to rapidly select cases and build them into store-friendly mixed pallets. It also allows
orders to be turned quickly and accurately, while its flexibility helps the facility balance the
