CONTROL & AUTOMATION
LOGISTICS SOLUTION
AMH HANDLING
AMH MATERIAL HANDLING COMPLETES
£3.2 MILLION AUTOMATION PROJECT FOR
WILKO’S E-COMMERCE OPERATION
AMH Material Handling has completed a
£3.2 million project for Wilko at its 110,000
sq ft e-fulfilment facility managed by
Clipper Logistics in Ollerton. The project
has automated the packaging, labelling
and destination sortation for 85 per cent
of online orders for both home and store
delivery. The logistics solution, which was
implemented ahead of Black Friday, has
already handled a quarter of a million items
in the first month of its operation.
FINDING A COMPLETE
SOLUTION
Colin Holland, project manager, Clipper
Logistics explains, “Wilko needed to facilitate
growth and make room for extra product
storage. In addition to this, they wanted to
limit reliance on manual labour. This was
especially important during peak order times
when it was difficult to source additional
colleagues at short notice. Furthermore,
the system needed to increase throughput
efficiencies and accuracy.
“We asked three different companies to
tender for the project, however, the decision
to select a supplier wasn’t solely based on
cost. We also took into account the project
timeline, their availability, the solution
itself and how it would work for us. On this
occasion, we decided AMH Material Handling
met our criteria and presented us with the
best option.
“AMH came onto site and they interrogated
our processes. They got to the bottom of
what our issues were and came up with
an innovative solution. They analysed our
packaging and reduced our seven carton
sizes down to four to simplify the operation.”
NEW AUTOMATED PACKAGING
AND DESPATCH SYSTEM
The bespoke solution has seen AMH install
the automated system over three floors at
Ollerton. A carton erecting machine has
been installed on each of the two mezzanine
floors along with licence plate number (LPN)
labelling machines. The first floor handles
small and medium sized cartons and the
second floor is for large and extra-large
cartons. Once erected, the labelling machine
94
PECM Issue 38
applies a unique LPN to each carton so
that it can be correctly tracked and routed
throughout the system.
Completed orders on the mezzanine floors
are placed onto a conveyor infeed which
merges them onto a powered spiral conveyor.
The spiral conveyor transports cartons down
to the ground floor where they join the
main conveyor system. AMH also installed a
multi-level goods lift so that trollies carrying
orders requiring picks from more than one
floor could be easily moved between the
three levels.