ZETES CASE STUDY |Corporate Express

A giant implementation operation

Pick any bank, government service or Zetes office at random – chances are they will be using office supplies from Corporate Express, with or without its brand name. The company runs a large scale operation across three continents and is the leader in the business market for office supplies. Zetes is their European partner for the introduction of new order picking technology in six European countries.

“What will I be doing today, scanning or voice picking?” The order pickers in the Corporate Express distribution centers are free to choose. “Some people prefer to communicate with the voice system, others prefer to scan. Of course they take into account the most practical option, according to the accessibility of the locations, but in practice it does not matter. Both procedures are completely interchangeable,” says Jan Walraven, manager Logistics Europe and product owner. “They do not influence quality or productivity, which is what counts.” This ability to choose is one of the achievements of the large scale implementation Zetes is managing for Corporate Express in six European countries. The office supply company runs a total of 13 distribution centers, the most recent being the distribution center (DC) in Almere (The Netherlands).
Thanks to numerous takeovers on three continents, the Amsterdam based Buhrmann Group has expanded into a large, in fact considerable, operation. Some years ago the takeover of Corporate Express in North America and Australia helped Buhrmann to jump from fifth place to the top of the office supply providers’ ranking. Due to the strong reputation of the Corporate Express name, Buhrmann started using Corporate Express as its flagship brand.

A European partner
“In the United States, we had successfully completed two implementations of the Vocollect® pick-to-voice-system,” says Walraven. Both productivity and quality had improved significantly. “It was logical that we would introduce the system in Europe too. We selected Zetes as our European partner for the provision and implementation of the Vocollect hardware and software. Why? Simply because one and one makes two. Zetes already supplied scanning equipment to the Almere DC and was already in touch with Vocollect.”

The optimization of order picking was preceded by an intensive integration process of the acquired distribution centers: the 33 smaller distribution centers Corporate Express had obtained in various takeovers were reduced to 13 large DC’s, Jan Walraven explains. “As we primarily sell our products in a fiercely competitive market, it is crucial that handling costs remain as low as possible. High productivity and a minimal error rate allow us to do so.”

A compact structural team
“The entire operation is run from our head office in Amsterdam by a compact structural team consisting of a system architect, technical support and a coordinating project leader. We determine the standardisation, but the local project owners are responsible for the execution. The warehouse management system or the ERP-system can vary from country to country, but that makes no difference to our order picking system. The assortment consists of some 12.000 items. Conveyor belts are used in the entire process. Flow racks present fast moving products to the order pickers, whereas the other articles are kept on shelves,” Project Manager Jan van Noord explains. He shows us a company movie on his laptop, illustrating the Almere DC in action.

Conveyors supply empty boxes for the customer orders. The WMS system automatically delivers the boxes to the order picking zone, with an adhesive label listing the products the customer has ordered. The system sends all necessary information to the Vocollect VoiceLink-server, which communicates with the order pickers. A single order can be distributed over multiple boxes, depending on the order volume. The order picker scans the label and collects the various items. In the past, the pickers used printed packing lists, now they operate wrist scanners or speak the so-called check-digit in their microphones while processing the order. The bidirectional voice system verifies both the picker’s accurateness and his progression. In other words, during the entire process the system checks the correct handling of the order. Making mistakes has become very hard...