Reference project - Thule Group
Thule Group sales volumes have been growing for many years and are expected to continue to grow. When their DC in Poland, which serves Eastern Europe, reached its capacity in 2017, Thule Group turned to Sim Logistics and Magnus Jarnekrantz with whom they have worked with before.
Sim Logistics helped Thule Group during the initial phases of a DC expansion project with a needs analysis and the dimensioning and design of a suitable solution matching the found needs. Business data like order row and stock balance history combined with article master data and sales forecasts were analyzed and projected in order to find the most likely future warehousing needs.
A couple of alternative solutions aiming for the most cost effective internal logistics and highest storage capacity were designed and visualized with 3D software tools. The alternatives were evaluated and compared from internal logistics, storage capacity, future expansion possibilities and cost point of view. The project group chose the overall most suitable alternative which best matches the found needs of the business. This means expanding the existing DC building with 6 300 sqm, 12 docks and 7 560 new pallet locations in racks.
In order to find the needed number of resources, for best possible preparations and analyzing the queuing risk, a 3D flow simulation was conducted. An average day during peak season five years into the future was chosen as the most interesting scenario and simulated. The simulation results gives Thule Group a good picture of the future needs of staffing and material handling equipment and showed hardly any signs of any queuing risks.
The DC expansion will be built according to the results and plans made in the project during 2018 and will be fully operational 2019.
Above you see some pictures from the project and below a movie from the flow simulation:
The customer:
“Sim Logistics have contributed with internal logistics expertise, deep analysis skills and made us think about important factors during the project that we otherwise may have missed. We are very satisfied with the way Sim Logistics have helped us during the pre-study, analysis and design phase of our warehouse expansion project. We highly recommend Magnus Jarnekrantz for these kind of internal logistics analysis and design tasks, and it was a pleasure to be working with him again on this very important project.”
Marcus Hunt
European & Asia DC Manager
Thule Group
About Thule Group:
Thule Group is the owner of a collection of brands all related to the outdoors and various types of transportation solutions. It is the market leader in cargo carriers for automobiles and a leading company in the outdoor- and bags market. Their products are sold in 140 markets, over 2 200 people work for them worldwide and net sales amounted to SEK 5,9 billion in 2017. Thule Group's head office is located in Malmö, south Sweden and their motto is "Active Life, Simplified".
