Auchan Retail Luxembourg has become the first retailer in Luxembourg to use Exotec’s Skypod system in its Dudelange warehouse. To protect their leading position in Luxembourg, Auchan Retail Luxembourg has partnered with Exotec, an innovative developer and manufacturer of robotic systems for warehouse automation in 2023.
Retailers continue to ramp up their investments in automated warehouse systems year on year. According to Grand View Research, these will reach as much as $51.12 billion (£39.295 billion) by 2030.
At Auchan’s site, Exotec has installed 37 robots in the warehouse to automate order processing, making the workload of warehouse employees lighter and more pleasant. The installation consists of metres-high racks in which the Skypod robots autonomously and efficiently manoeuvre in all directions to extract products from 15,300 bins. They then take these to one of three picking stations, where the order is completed.
Rémy Malchirand, EVP sales Western Europe at Exotec, said: “By automating warehouse activities, Auchan has significantly increased the quality and reliability of the order picking process, saving employees from a lot of walking and lifting and significantly improving working conditions.
“This is fully in line with our human first philosophy, in which we constantly make efforts to make work in the warehouse as comfortable and safe as possible.”
Automated systems increase the throughput of the warehouse to as many as 915 orders per hour. Given the popularity of e-commerce, where consumers typically expect delivery within 24 hours, this is a major asset for Auchan Luxembourg. In total, 160,000 orders are prepared annually from the Dudelange warehouse, which are delivered via distribution points throughout Luxembourg. Orders can be prepared in 10 minutes by Auchan.
Exotec’s Skypod robots have no fear of heights: climbing shelves up to 12 metres high to retrieve products from bins.
“The newly installed Skypod system in Dudelange occupies only 749 square meters of floor space, whereas our previous system took up 2,200 square metres of space,” says Nicolas Gueuzurian, marketing and e-commerce director at Auchan Retail Luxembourg.
“After a month and a half transition period, the number of products available in the Auchan Drive has increased by 17 percent, bringing the total to more than 13,000, while further improving the shopping experience for our customers. Thanks to this functional building block, we were able to open two new branches in September, thus serving the Luxembourg territory even better.”
