DHL Home Delivery in Greven uses a sorting solution from cellumation. Account points in the material flow are resolved with automated sorting and the number of parcels sorted per hour has been increased by 40 per cent.
At the Greven logistics centre, DHL Home Delivery GmbH prepares shipments for HSE, one of Europe's largest e-commerce companies. On average, HSE sends more than 45,000 parcels a day to customers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The parcel centre in Greven meets this challenge with over 550 employees and 176 loading gates. The highest parcel volume to date was 620,000 parcels in December 2021. The sheer volume became a challenge for the intralogistics processes: At the Merging of two conveyor lines and subsequent distribution of the parcels A bottleneck occurred on two other conveyor lines; parcels became wedged and there were backlogs that had to be cleared manually by employees. A solution therefore had to be found for DHL's logistics centre in Greven in order to reduce the bottlenecks. Simplify and speed up sorting of the extremely high parcel volumes. For this task, the DHL Greven in favour of a collaboration with the Bremen-based conveyor technology specialist cellumation and the system integrator FS Solutions.
Since August 2020, a celluveyor CROSSDOCK has been in operation in Greven with a Sorting capacity of 3,500 parcels per hour in operation. This corresponds to an increase in performance of 40 per cent compared to the conventional predecessor system, which could „only“ convey 2,000 parcels per hour. Covering an area of just 2.7 square metres, the celluveyor reliably conveys and distributes the parcel consignments without jams. In addition to high availability, smooth integration was particularly important for the implementation partner and logistics coordinator FS Solutions. This requirement was met by cellumation thanks to its plug-and-play solution and the very short set-up time over a weekend.
„The existing system was dismantled on Saturday, the conveyors from FS Solutions and the celluveyor were set up, the systems were tested on Sunday and the system was live again on Sunday evening. In other words, it only took a day and a half to dismantle the old system and integrate the new one.“
Martin Schäfer, Managing Director FS Solutions
The celluveyor CROSSDOCK at DHL Greven was integrated between non-system components from FS Solutions. The parcels and conveyed goods are fed in and out via neighbouring conveyor technology. The celluveyor CROSSDOCK communicates with existing IT systems via digital outputs and inputs. This enables quick and easy integration.
The celluveyor CROSSDOCK has been configured with two inputs and two outputs. The parcels are therefore transported either straight ahead or diagonally and detected by two 3D cameras monitoring the area. The first camera determines the parcel size in the entrance area and the second camera ensures an organised „parcel ballet“ on the cells. The omnidirectional drive wheels of the system position the packs so that they are directed to the outlets with one of their short sides facing forwards. The celluveyor CROSSDOCK even aligns parcels that are turned en route, which avoids jams in other conveyor applications and makes further processing easier. As a result, the parcels are scanned successfully and there is no need for an „extra round of scanning“.
„We would choose the celluveyor again and again for a similar application. What I like best of all is that the system turns twisted cartons back in the right direction at the hint of the 3D cameras. That reduces our workload considerably.“
Thomas Overhoff, Technical Director of DHL Home Delivery
The flexibility of the celluveyor's hardware and software enabled smooth integration into the existing conveyor infrastructure; the system was ready to go after just one weekend. Since then, the system, which measures just 2.7 square metres, has been conveying 3,500 parcels per hour - reliably and without any disruptions for three years. This corresponds to a Increase of 40 per cent. Market or customer-related changes or extensions to the celluveyor can be made quickly and easily without disrupting production. With the use of this innovative conveyor technology, DHL is one of the pioneers in the use of intelligent automation technology. „Automated and efficient sorting of parcels in the smallest of spaces and optimise alignment - apart from the celluveyor, we have not found a suitable system for this. And it has been doing this job perfectly for years,“ summarises Martin Schäfer from FS Solutions.
„The project in Greven shows once again that this intelligent and high-precision sorting technology can be used to optimise and automate goods flow processes in a highly efficient and simple way.“
Hendrik Thamer, CEO and Co-Founder at cellumation
Source: Cellumation
