New warehouse setup deserves a flower!

An efficient warehouse layout allows Greetz to surprise even more people with a card, flower or gift

Who has never received a card from Greetz? Or maybe even a box of chocolates, a bunch of flowers or a bottle of wine? Since October 2022, greeting cards and gifts from Greetz have been coming from a new warehouse in Almere. With the help of SSI SCHAEFER, the fast-growing company has set up a sophisticated and highly efficient logistics operation here, which has shifted the cut-off time by half an hour.

In 2004, Greetz launched a service that was new to the Netherlands: the ability to create and send online greeting cards to people celebrating a birthday, wedding, birth, anniversary or other joyous occasion. Nowadays, this involves tens of thousands of cards a day that come out of the printing line "on demand" and arrive in the mailbox the very next day. In addition, Greetz sends thousands of gifts every day, which can add up considerably on busy days. The corona pandemic showed how valuable it can be to send a card and/or gift with a personal message. In fact, in 2021, Greetz experienced an absolute peak year, with sales almost 5 times higher than in 2012. "It is logical that these sales have declined slightly, now that people can visit each other again," states Sander Jelgerhuis Swildens, operations manager at Greetz. "But even if we filter out the corona peak, our sales continue to rise. We also expect to continue to grow steadily in the future."

Logical design, efficient process

The previous warehouse in Amsterdam offered insufficient space for this growth. The search for a new warehouse therefore ended at an existing 8,000 m2 building in Almere. Here, with the help of SSI SCHAEFER, Greetz has created a sophisticated and highly efficient process. Innovation Manager Sabine Huijskes: "We first mapped out all of the processes. How do the employees and goods move through the operation? And what is the most logical layout? We wrote our ideas on post-its and stuck them on a large sheet. From these, 95% was adopted in practice, which in particular drastically reduced the running times between the various departments and machines."

SSI SCHAEFER had also supplied the racking in the Amsterdam warehouse and was therefore not unknown to Greetz. Despite this, Jelgerhuis Swildens and Huijskes decided to start a new tender process for the new warehouse layout and once again chose SSI SCHAEFER. "This of course has to do with the pricing, the quality of the storage systems and the way the quotation was worked out. But the most important distinction is SSI SCHAEFER's ability to think along with us about the layout of the warehouse. For example, with regard to the arrangement of the shelf racks or the height and load-bearing capacity of the pallet racking beams. The fact that we already had good experience with SSI SCHAEFER products did the rest."

2,000 storage locations

In total, Greetz now has 2,000 pallet storage locations. These are mainly for packaging materials and bulk stock of the best-selling products. The vast majority of the product portfolio is stocked immediately upon arrival in the shelf racks, which consist of 244 sections. "By far the majority of gift items are in blue bins, which we brought back from Amsterdam and which were also supplied by SSI SCHAEFER," Huijskes explains. "Thanks to these bins, we can store all the products neatly and safely, without the inconvenience of empty boxes. The totes have an opening at the front so that the order pickers can easily access the products." Part of the shelf shelving is in the cold store, where some chocolate products and the fruit for the fruit boxes are stored. Another part is used for balloon order picking.

Following on from the racking system, SSI SCHAEFER also supplied a tilt gate and moving walkway. While the tilting gate serves to place goods safely on the mezzanine floor above the docks, the moving walkway replaces an old, steep staircase that no longer met safety requirements. Thanks to an extra-large landing, the exit below the stairs remains perfectly accessible.

30 minutes extra service

Thanks in part to the efficient layout, the productivity of the 50 employees in the fulfillment department has increased by some 20%. The number of boxes that can be processed per person per hour is considerably higher in the new warehouse. "This is largely due to the layout, but also to the improved overview," says Jelgerhuis Swildens. "Thanks to the shorter lead times, we have been able to move the cut-off time for customers from 10 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.. This allows us to offer another 30 minutes of extra service."

Delivery

PR600 pallet racking

- 102 sections

- 2,000 pallet locations

R3000 shelf racks 244 sections, of which:

- 154 sections for gift items

- 60 sections for balloons

- 12 sections for refrigerated products

Bordestrap

Tilt gate