FM Logistic

Overview & Challenge

FM Logistic firmly believes that supply chains have the power to create positive impacts for people and the planet and they’ve been doing so since 1967. They implement that vision every day in 14 countries with 28,600 people across Europe, Asia, and Latin America.

FM Logistic knows that flexibility and scalability are key for optimized warehousing services. They have developed an innovative "one-roof" model, which offers a wide range of warehousing services in one facility to maximize space utilization, consolidate business activities, and utilize resources to their full advantage.

In FM Logistic’s Wiskitki, Poland facility, they perform picking and putaway for a world-renowned retailer of affordable home furnishings and home goods that has moved to primarily ecommerce sales in Europe rather than physical stores.

There were two reasons that FM Logistic looked at warehouse automation for this greenfield facility. The first reason was that they knew the productivity levels of conventional manual processes and wanted to improve upon that. They also needed a solution that would be very flexible and scalable to support the expected customer growth of 30-50%.

Along with productivity and scalability, FM Logistic needed to implement a new solution quickly. They had just nine months to have a solution on board, including contract negotiation.

“It’s a real advantage to have the display easily switch to each associate’s language.”

Patrick Bellart, Automation Director

In charge of IKEA project at FM Logistics

Results

C3PL gains flexibility and scalability with LocusBots

Locus deployed a warehouse execution platform and 46 autonomous mobile robots (“bots”) along with a suite of dashboards and actionable reporting tools for FM Logistic.

FM Logistic chose Locus Robotics for the ability to get up and running quickly, as they had the tight time frame for implementation. Locus Robotics was also chosen for the ability to smoothly increase capacity as needed with peak bots through the Robots-as-a-Service (RaaS) model without interrupting the facility’s picking and putaway workflow and operations.

The associates that work with the bots enjoy having the display screens show the item to be picked in their preferred language. At the facility, the bots display languages for associates in English, Polish, and even the Cyrillic alphabet for the Ukrainian associates.

“It’s a real advantage to have the display easily switch to each associate’s language,” says Patrick Bellart, Automation Director in charge of IKEA project at FM Logistic .

When new associates start, the bots make it very easy for them to learn and start picking. In no time at all, the associates are picking and working alongside the bots. With the home goods products that are picked, there is a longer training process to learn how to properly pack the products, but picking has been easy.