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VANDERLANDE EQUIPS COMPANIES WITH E-COMMERCE SOLUTIONS
The Adapto has inbuilt sorting and sequencing functionality with multi-directional shuttles.
Vanderlande’s ANZ Director of Warehouse Solutions, Roald de Groot explains to MHD how the Dutch-headquartered company’s e-commerce solutions and innovative technologies equips multinationals in logistics and supply chains to tackle problems in a volatile world.
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anderlande provides automation solutions to airports as well as warehouses, postal delivery companies, food retailers, and multinationals – including such iconic names as Woolworths and Crocs – that operate e-commerce platforms. Roald de Groot, Vanderlande’s Director of Warehouse Solutions in Australia & New Zealand, says the company is adapting to the growing e-commerce industry and meeting the exponential demands produced by the pandemic. “E-commerce works differently from old-fashioned brick-and-mortar warehouses,” Roald says. “The SKU ranges, size of orders, number of items per order, and number of order-lines are completely different.” All these variables, he says, can significantly impact how automation is used in a warehouse.
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According to Roald, Vanderlande has been working on various concepts for warehouse solutions. These range from bricks-and-mortar to omnichannel to completely e-commerce-dedicated solutions. “We’ve also been very active in standardising the modules we use to build those concepts,” he adds. “As an example, we have a long-term partnership with one of the biggest e-commerce players around the globe.” He explains how Vanderlande has been working with other companies to standardise solutions and to change onsite working to reduce lead-times on some projects by almost 50 per cent. He compares the process to using a ready-made Lego block. “Every time when there’s a new project, we make sure we have the standard Lego blocks to build the house; we avoid building a new Lego block.”
INTERNATIONAL CHALLENGES The Toyota-owned company has faced numerous challenges during the pandemic as it’s provided its services to the supply chain, logistics and materials handling industries – all of which were significantly impacted by COVID-19 and the social and physical restrictions which accompanied it. One of them was related to when Australia closed its borders to international travel. Vanderlande had some large, complex projects, which required key resources from overseas to build them. Team spirit and dedication were also important in helping Vanderlande deal with the COVID-19 related challenges. Roald says this involved the local Vanderlande team expanding its knowledge, and overseas team members isolating for two weeks
