Fives automates Carrefour’s order picking platform in Bourges – Robotics & Automation News

French grocery and retail giant Carrefour has entrusted Fives, an industrial engineering group that has been active in intralogistics for over 50 years, with the automation of its new order-picking platform in Bourges, France.

This logistics platform, which was inaugurated on May 28, 2024, is part of Carrefour’s transformation plan and provides fresh produce to its stores in eleven departments in central France.

Carrefour has launched a transformation plan to meet its human resources challenges, optimize supply flows and create a network of logistics platforms adapted to its store base. The logistics platform in Bourges is one of them.

With a total area of 66,000 sq m, this platform is divided into 11 cells. The one dedicated to order picking for fresh produce (fruits and vegetables, seafood, grocery and brewery) was designed and installed by Fives to serve nearly one hundred Carrefour stores (Hypermarkets and Markets).

It allows:

• > Increase the overall performance of the plant and guarantee the availability of all products for all types of stores, by sorting 8,500 parcels per hour.
• > Improved working conditions for employees with ergonomic solutions that require less effort, less movement and less handling, and therefore generate fewer risks. Noise levels are also reduced.

A technological leader in order picking for more than 50 years, Fives has already installed fifteen similar platforms in France, including ten since 2021, for the largest players in distribution.

The benefits of the Bourges platform illustrate Fives’ expertise in optimizing intralogistics flows:

• > Order picking is made more reliable thanks to proprietary warehouse management software solutions (WMS/ WES) that minimize the risk of errors, which is greater for fresh produce and when handling multi-pallets products, while complying with quality standards.
• > Productivity is optimized with the high-capacity cross-belt sorter, GENI-Belt, which is fed by three injection lines and can sort up to 8,500 parcels per hour to serve one hundred ramps.

Yemna Akbache, general manager of Fives Syleps, says: “As a designer and integrator of automation and robotics solutions, we are convinced that a personalized, tailor-made approach is the best way to meet our customers’ needs.

“Carrefour’s logistics base in Bourges illustrates our ability to listen to and understand supply chain players, and to offer them high-performance solutions made in Fives and made in France, that meet their challenges.”