Albert Heijn
Albert Heijn is the leading food retailer in the Netherlands with more than 1 000 stores, and is also part of the world-leading global food retail group Ahold Delhaize.
With IMI WMS™, Albert Heijn operates one of the fastest-moving supply chains on the market, leveraging cross-docking and differentiated picking strategies to turn the inventory extremely fast, thereby ensuring fresh products and high availability in the stores.
The distribution centers operate fully integrated with voice-picking and automation equipment, and the warehouses process and deliver well over a million store order lines per day. A long-running strategic cooperation with IMI product development has resulted in a solution that is almost entirely free from customized software code.
Challenge
- Differentiating picking strategies, warehouse layouts and throughput times by market and store format
- Replace (functionally rich) own solution
- Support a high-speed warehouse management operation
Solution
- IMI WMS™ with integrated voice picking and warehouse automation
- Two central warehouses and four regional DCs ships more than a million order lines a day
Result
- Increased overall productivity
- Increased store selling space by faster turnover
- Decreased the stock level for fresh goods to less than two days with increased delivery rate
- Decreased the lead time from order to delivery to under 18 hours
