Multiple solutions to manage pet food products

About Royal Canin

Within the Mars group, Royal Canin is a business pioneer in the pet food sector, which was founded in 1967 in the town of Aimargues, in Southern France.

Its success is built on its continuous innovation, dishing up the best nutritional care solutions for dogs and cats with their age, size, breed and lifestyle in mind.

The warehouse

The company holds the reigns of a finished products warehouse in Aimargues, which Mecalux furnished with 7 m high pallet racks. Here, a Multi-SKU system stores huge amounts of diverse palletised goods.

This system allows direct access to all pallets, providing greater flexibility when managing goods and order pick tasks, while also guaranteeing precise stock control.

The lower storage levels of some of the racks include live channels for picking of smaller dimension products. These live picking channels comprise slightly inclined roller tracks, so boxes slide via gravity. Replenish operations are a benefit of live storage channels, meaning workers slide the boxes into the corresponding level. Then, these boxes roll to the opposite end automatically, bypassing work interference between reslotting and collecting products.

In one part of the racks, product is picked straight off pallets located on the lower levels and on the floor. Handheld RF devices guide operators as they traverse warehouse aisles in search of the products listed for each order by the WMS.

Apart from that, a passageway crosses through the block of racks and lets operators flow about freely while working. Remaining levels overhead are enclosed with grid-like mesh shelves to avoid accidental tumbling of merchandise.

Consolidation area

Orders prepped with small items are sent to the consolidation area, where documentation is printed out, and the order checked, packaged and labelled for shipment.

Where are these final operations done? In an installed set of automatic conveyors, arranged in an L-shape circuit. Here, the central conveyor runs at a speed of 25 m/min and has a built-in sealing machine.

A parallelly placed, non-motorised roller conveyor lets warehouse operators move boxes manually to the handiest work position.

Once boxes are sealed, they are sorted and grouped by similar routes and orders before being sent out.

The mezzanine

Erected above the consolidation area, the mezzanine makes floor to ceiling use of vertical warehouse space. Packaging and consumables used in order picking are stationed on this higher story.

An up and over pallet gate offers best practice in safety when inserting and retrieving pallet from the raised mezzanine.

Advantages for Royal Canin

• Substantial locations: the racks have a capacity to store 1,800 pallets, which should satisfy Royal Canin’s growing appetite for logistics.
• Flawless goods management: direct access to products establishes prime control over stock and streamlines order preparation.
• An integrated system: the inclusion of the conveyor set in the consolidation area increments the productivity of in-warehouse activities.