BY VICTORIA KICKHAM, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
REVERSE LOGISTICS
Strategy
A RAPID INCREASE IN E-COMMERCE ORDERS, SHIPMENTS, AND
returns has been fueling growth and driving change at the Popken Fashion
Group, an affiliation of four fashion companies with locations in 30 countries. In particular, the increased activity has been a catalyst for change in the
company’s Rastede, Germany, fulfillment center, which ships orders to end
customers as well as Popken’s 650 stores and business partners around the
world. The company needed to find a way to alleviate the growing strain on
the fulfillment center’s operations and prevent customer service levels from
slipping.
A retrofit of the firm’s material handling system for returns was just what
the doctor ordered.
“In the same amount of space, we can process twice as many returns as
we could two years ago,” says Thomas Wetter, head of logistics for Popken
Fashion Group, noting that the new system yielded results immediately upon
completion of the project earlier this year.
Popken Fashion Group’s fulfillment center upgrade and retrofit included
automated transport systems, packaging machines, conveyor systems, and
support services from material handling solutions provider Interroll and
logistics integration/consulting firms Cars & Rails and IntraLogistik. In total,
the overhaul of the 59,000-square-foot fulfillment center took two years to
complete.
A return to
productivity
The Popken Fashion Group
modernized its returns
center to accommodate
growth in e-commerce
orders and an accompanying increase in shipments
and returns. The result?
A 30-percent productivity
improvement in its
Rastede, Germany, facility.
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