News

Galipo Foods improves picking rates by 100 per cent with the introduction of AMRs

Award-winning food distributor Galipo Foods has appointed Cohesio Group for an Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMR) project that is set to become the world’s first AMR project in a temperature-controlled food service environment.

The project represents a new frontier in the use of AMR technology. The strategy addressed numerous challenges for the Cohesio and Geek+ teams, who collaborated to provide a logistics solution that delivered increased output, more storage capacity, greater efficiency and enhanced deliverables.

The program was launched in August 2019, and is already showing significant efficiencies. The AMRs have doubled Galipo’s pallet-picking rate, allowing the team to better meet customer demands. Faster picking and less travel around the distribution centre means its trucks are able to take more orders more often. Galipo can now assemble custom food orders, with the AMRs doing the heavy lifting while floor staff seamlessly manage the process.

The Cohesio Group solution comprised 12 robots introduced to the 27 m X 13 m Galipo refrigerated warehouse located in Dry Creek, SA. All are programmed to work seamlessly within Galipo’s existing logistics interface, which includes Cohesio Group’s voice-powered workflow optimisation solutions. As a leading South Australian food supplier, Galipo wanted to enhance the efficiency of its process to meet strong business growth and customer demand.

“Balancing speedy delivery with careful, systematic planning always underpins our project management ethos. For Galipo, we spent three months carefully building the technology blue print and architecture, to ensure timely delivery and strict adherence to the budget. Accurate data collection is critical at this stage,” Ravi Nath, Head of Automated Solutions at Cohesio Group said.

“We are delighted with the return on our investment. It means we stay competitive by remaining at the forefront of logistics and warehousing technology.  Our partnership with Cohesio Group dates back more than ten years. We relied on the team for the implementation of voice-enabled workflow optimisation systems, so we were confident in their ability to handle this new challenge. Our warehousing systems are now completely transformed and we are better prepared to meet growing and evolving customer demand. We’re already looking to the next stage of innovation which is improving our inventory management and order fulfilment process in the dry goods and frozen food distribution departments,” Nathan Narayanan, General Manager of Galipo Foods said.

“The project presented numerous challenges. Firstly, the changing trends in the food distribution market meant that customers were purchasing smaller volumes more frequently, in order to minimise their own storage pressures and ensure product freshness. This increase in order quantity was leading to increased demand for the Galipo workforce. Secondly, like any project, buy-in from the warehouse team was essential for success. Consequently, a comprehensive team training program was fundamental to the rollout. Thirdly, we needed to adhere to a variety of strict hygiene and national food safety standards, to uphold the Galipo reputation for quality and reliability of its produce,” Rizan Mawzoon, Head of Transformation at Cohesio Group said.

Send this to a friend