Vanderlande on e-commerce

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.

Vanderlande 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.

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

upon arriving in Australia to work.

Some of the other issues it faced included material scarcity – such as for electrical components and motors, but also availability of containers to transport goods into Australia.

Roald says because of this disruption, the company faced some challenges with lead-times for some of the products it put onto the market. However, it cooperated with its suppliers to mitigate the impact of the materials scarcity.

“We need to learn from the challenges our customers face and tune our development and produce solutions to problems,” he says. “Each customer is unique.”

He adds it’s all about establishing a close partnership with the customer and being transparent when communicating with them as well as tackling challenges together and using automation solutions to address them.

INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS

Roald explains how Vanderlande uses an e-commerce solution which uses its Adapto shuttles. “It is an automated storage and retrieval solution that’s central to businesses’ operations and distribution centres,” he says.

“It enables efficient and fast delivery to stores for B2B and B2C,” he adds. “The system is flexible so capacity and storage can be increased independently, and that’s what customers need. Flexibility and scalability are really the key.

“A lot of our customers are open and transparent, and they also invite us to discuss with them what their concerns are with regards to Adapto is futureproof, flexible, and scalable. If you look at some of the main benefits of that solution, it’s a very lean infrastructure. It has inbuilt sorting and sequencing functionality with multi-directional shuttles so there’s no requirement for additional equipment. ”

distribution centres and supply chain networks. We really relish those conversations with the customers. We can’t produce the best solution without cooperating with them.”

Vanderlande is using its new technologies like Adapto to manage any further issues with its customers caused by the pandemic and the high volume of online orders.

“We have solutions and methodologies that allow our e-commerce players to expand while adapting to the unpredictable market challenges,” Roald says.

“Storage and throughput are two very important elements in a warehouse, and they can be scaled up independently with this Adapto solution.”

He explains how a GTP (Goods to Person) solution involves shuttles and mini-loads. “If you look at it from a shuttle perspective, there are traditional full-captive shuttle systems and our full-roaming shuttle systems with Adapto,” he says.

“Adapto is futureproof, flexible, and scalable,” he adds. “If you look at some of the main benefits of that solution, it’s a very lean infrastructure. It has inbuilt sorting and sequencing functionality with multi-directional shuttles so there’s no requirement for additional equipment.

“The Adapto solutions are also modular; they have a maximum availability, so there’s no single point of failure and shuttles can be maintained offline.”

He says e-commerce has its roots in the mid 1990s when US companies sent books and CDs all around the world.

“There’s no sign of slowing down. E-commerce continues to expand and will have a long-term impact on the way a lot of companies operate,” Roald says. “I would even say that the recent pandemic has had a big impact as well on the industry.”

“E-commerce orders were booming,” he adds. “But at the same time, although the orders were booming, those same e-commerce companies had a lot of challenges with fulfilling the orders they receivedbecause of shortages of labour and staff being ill.

“I think that if you look at that, combined with some other societal trends, like economies are growing, people are spending more, wealth is increasing, etc. I would say that automation is the key to solving these issues, and the more flexible and scalable you can be, the better prepared you are for the unpredictable future.” ■

Goods-to-Person (GTP) solution involves shuttles and mini-loads.