SportOkay GmbH, e-commerce specialist for clothing and sports equipment for outdoor activities, mountaineering, climbing and skiing, biking and fitness, offers more than 200 top brands in its online shop www.sportokay.com offering the unique possibility to check out all
articles in 3D. The Alpine sports specialist supplies tens of thousands of satisfied customers in Germany, Austria, Italy and 15 other countries. Due to the very positive development of the online concept, SportOkay.com is investing in a new logistics centre with a fully automated small parts warehouse to serve as a central picking system. Hörmann Logistik's AutoStore® concept convinced all along the line and won the contract.
The concept
The AutoStore® warehouse will be built on the second floor of a new building, goods receipt andorder-picking facilities are located on the ground floor.
Hörmann Logistik carried out several real-time plant simulations with original data to create acustomized design.
Customer requirements and simulation results led to a final system configuration in two stages. In phase one, 22 robots with 26,500 bins on 16 levels and 6 swing-port workstations will provide some 168 storages and returns as well as 4,000 picks per day or 400 picks per hour. In the second, final, stage, the AutoStore® grid will be enlarged to almost double its width, so that 44 robots with approximately 55,000 bins and 12 swing-port workstations will provide around 336 storages and returns plus 8,000 picks per day or 800 picks per hour.
The AutoStore system consists of an aluminium grid with a total dimension of 18.4 m x 36.9 m (79.2 m) x 5.4 m (L x W x H). In the grid, stacks of 16 containers each stand directly on the hall floor. The 22 (44) battery-powered, autonomous robots move on the rail system above the bin stacks. The robots jointly pick up bins, re-sort them and are responsible for the supply and disposal of the Swing-Port workstations downstairs. The maximum total weight of the 649 mm x 449 mm x 330 mm (L x W x H) bins is 35 kg with a net load of around 30 kg. A weight check at the ports prevents exceeding the maximum permissible weight. Dividers allow for flexible partitioning of bins for simultaneous handling of different articles.
Four crosswise arranged pairs of wheels allow the robots to move to any position in the grid at a speed of 3.1 m/s. The robots communicate via WLAN with the AutoStore® controller, from where they receive individual transport orders. In case of low workload or low battery charge, the robots automatically move to one of 22 (44) charging stations at the edge of the grid. The AutoStore® control system sits on the connected service platform.
The workstations for storage, retrieval and picking are located directly below the AutoStore® system at ground level. Deliveries arrive at the goods receiving workstations on pallets or in boxes where the worker unpacks and stores them. Goods for picking move to one of the goods issue workstations. The worker there removes them and places them in shipping cartons.
The AutoStore® small parts warehouse at SportOkay.com in Innsbruck went live in late summer 2018.
Sport Okay GmbH is an enterprise of the Wintersport Tirol AG group of companies. Besides 10 stationary sporting goods stores, the world famous Stubai ski resort (http://www.stubaiergletscher.com) is also part of this group.
