SSI SCHAEFER

To support the growth of the business the supply chain team at Boohoo together with SSI SCHAEFER implemented a state-of-the-art automation solution in the Sheffield Fulfilment Centre (UK2).  The total investment was £125m and generated a payback of between 4-5yrs based on improved productivity and a variety of efficiency savings.  The capacity of the site has also increased with stockholding and throughput doubling.

The solution brings together two major components in the form of a goods to person shuttle system that eliminates the lengthy pick walks associated with the previous manual operation and a pouch sortation system that allows products to be picked in efficient batches and sorted to customer orders for packing.  The pouch sortation system also utilises a huge dynamic buffer to further increase pick efficiency with a concept known as ‘predictive picking’ which uses intelligent algorithms developed by Boohoo and SSI to pick items based on anticipated orders to reduce touch points and increase efficiency.