DHL Supply Chain “meeting the constantly growing orders with greater speed and reliability”

 DHL Supply Chain, the contract logistics division of Deutsche Post DHL Group, has commissioned a fully automated robot picking system for its long-standing customer Peek & Cloppenburg Düsseldorf at its logistics center in Staufenberg, Lower Saxony

The 6,000 square meter AutoStore of robotics specialist Element Logic is one of the largest fully automated storage and retrieval systems in Germany. It is located in one of the 5 halls with 10,000 square meters each and 50 loading gates of the logistics center, which DHL Supply Chain operates for various customers.

From Staufenberg in Lower Saxony, DHL Supply Chain handles the fashion retailer’s Germany-wide e-commerce business and also ships to end customers in Austria, Poland and the Netherlands. This includes the receipt of new goods and returns, the storage of the 3.5 million fashion items, the picking of orders, the packaging and the dispatch of the goods to the end customers.

Thanks to the AutoStore system, inventory can be continuously controlled and high efficiency in storage and retrieval can be guaranteed. In this way, customer orders are processed even faster and more reliably. The interaction of the flexible and modularly expandable robotics solution and the on-site employees shortens the lead times of individual customer orders from the time of order to shipment, improves operational efficiency and simplifies workflows for employees.

The AutoStore enables space-saving storage and fully automatic picking of articles. It consists of an aluminium frame in which the current inventory is stacked and stored in 196,000 plastic containers on 16 levels. Above the containers, the aluminium frame forms the so-called grid, on which 160 robots assemble the ordered goods fully automatically according to the individual orders. The goods are then processed by the employees at 21 ports and prepared for dispatch.

“We are pleased to support the omnichannel growth of our long-standing customer Peek & Cloppenburg Düsseldorf with this automated solution and to further strengthen our trusting cooperation and jointly invest in a successful future. E-commerce is one of our strategic growth sectors at DHL Supply Chain. Therefore, this implementation is another important building block in the expansion in this area and with regard to our automation strategy,” says Rainer Haag, CEO DHL Supply Chain Germany & Alps. “The Staufenberg site is also very conveniently located and offers us a direct connection to our sister divisions DHL Paket and DHL Express. In this way, we can ensure that 85% of parcels are usually delivered to their recipients in Germany the next day.”

“The new AutoStore storage system in Staufenberg enables us to meet the needs and expectations of our customers even better and to meet the constantly growing orders with greater speed and reliability. We have thus set an important milestone for our vision of becoming the leading multi-brand omnichannel retailer for fashion in Europe by 2026,” says Marco Rebohm, Managing Director of Mode Logistik GmbH & Co. KG, which as a subsidiary of the Peek & Cloppenburg Group is responsible for the logistics of the multi-brand fashion retailer. “We are pleased to have DHL Supply Chain at our side as a partner who will develop and implement new solutions together with us.”

“The cooperation between DHL and Peek & Cloppenburg Düsseldorf here also offers great opportunities for the municipality of Staufenberg, the surrounding communities and the region. Due to our central location in the heart of Germany, the Staufenberg site has the potential to continue to benefit from the growth of logistics in the future. The logistics park has played an enormously important role for years. It is part of the industrial area near Lutterberg on the Autobahn 7,” says District Administrator Marcel Riethig from Göttingen. “This is where the “DHL City” is located, as the location is often called, where the DHL Parcel Center and the DHL Express Center are located in addition to DHL Supply Chain. Logistics has been a welcome partner for the municipality of Staufenberg for years. This should remain so in the future,” adds Bernd Grebenstein, Mayor of the municipality of Staufenberg. The mayor assumes that traffic flows will not increase significantly.

* There are two independent companies Peek & Cloppenburg with headquarters in Düsseldorf and Hamburg. This information relates to Peek & Cloppenburg KG, Düsseldorf.