By deploying Exotec’s Skypod® system at its Londerzeel distribution centre, Collect&Go, Colruyt Group’s online grocery service, now operates the largest Exotec installation in Belgium. It is a major investment designed to keep pace with the rapid growth of online grocery shopping.
| Robots | Stations | Exchanger | Locations | Lines/hour |
| 134 | 9 | 4 | 52 000 | 2000 |
Collect&Go: Belgium’s online grocery pioneer
Founded in 2000, Collect&Go is Colruyt Group’s online grocery service and the market leader in Belgium. Customers order Colruyt and Bio-Planet products online, then either pick them up from one of more than 250 collection points across Belgium and Luxembourg or have them delivered to their door.
Orders are prepared in Colruyt stores and at two dedicated e-commerce distribution centres, in Londerzeel and Erpe-Mere. The Londerzeel site currently serves 50 collection points as well as home delivery.
Today, one in two Belgians shops for groceries online. For Colruyt Group, online grocery is no longer an add-on service but a core part of the way Belgians do their shopping.
The challenges: capacity, quality and a zero-defect standard
Steadily growing demand
Every year, 15 additional Collect&Go collection points are to be supplied from Londerzeel. To keep up with this pace without compromising on availability or reliability, the distribution centre needed to increase both its capacity and its productivity.
Uncompromising quality standards
Colruyt operates a zero-defect policy, and with good reason: because Collect&Go serves end consumers directly, even the smallest order error has an immediate impact on its reputation.
An in-house WMS to integrate
Colruyt relies on a warehouse management system developed in-house. The Skypod system had to connect to it seamlessly and adapt to its specific requirements.
Putting people where they make a difference
Collect&Go wanted to take repetitive tasks off its employees’ hands, so they could focus on the work where their expertise really counts.
“We chose Exotec to take the automation of our Londerzeel centre further, to make our employees’ work easier.”
The solution: a fully integrated Skypod system
Replenishment under control
Exotec totes stored in the system are carried by Exchangers to five replenishment stations, where operators fill them with individual items or full cases. Each tote then passes over a scale that checks it does not exceed the 30 kg weight limit.
Compliant totes go straight into the system. Any others are diverted to a dedicated station that gathers non-conforming totes (overweight, oversized and so on), where an operator handles the tote and makes the correction in the WMS.
Full traceability for every customer tote
Orders are picked directly into Collect&Go’s collapsible crates, known as “Cogos”, each of which carries a unique QR code. Operators place the Cogos on trays coming out of the system. A Cognex camera reads the tray’s ID and links it to the Cogo’s QR code, so that every customer crate can be tracked from start to finish.
Picking brought to the operator
Eight picking stations handle order preparation, with a ninth station used mainly for inventory. Skypod robots bring product totes to one side of the station and Cogos to the other; the operator transfers the items, checks the groceries and packs the crates.
Shipping sequenced to truck departures
Orders are released from the system at the consolidation stations according to truck departure times, in strict sequence, since a single customer may have several Cogos.
Flexible, advanced operator stations
The consolidation stations share the same route as incoming items, which means they can also be switched to replenishment. The exception stations also allow manual infeed of Cogos that already contain items stored outside the Skypod system, so that they can be completed with products held within it.
Exotec: end-to-end integrator for a state-of-the-art warehouse
Exotec handled the full integration of the solution, including all peripheral equipment: Cognex cameras, the Elten tray stacker/destacker and Mettler Toledo scales.
With 130 robots, Londerzeel is now one of the most advanced e-grocery distribution centres in Belgium.
“With this automation, we are building today the capacity, quality and speed we will need tomorrow.”