At the end of November, the Hager electrical solutions group commissioned the automated part of its international logistics platform, which it has established since last May in Vendenheim, north of Strasbourg (Bas-Rhin) on the former site of the refinery of agglomeration.
“The location chosen met our criteria for connection to the motorway, a site large enough to make extensions possible, and a central position in relation to our main production sites, located in border France and Germany”, underlined on this occasion Ralph Fürderer, technical director and member of the management board of the Franco-German group.
The infrastructure is spread over 27,500 m2 covered, the construction of which represented an investment of 40 million euros. These areas will receive almost all of the group’s products from all over the world and intended for distribution to the four corners of the planet, mainly to national “distribution centers”.
Sixty trucks will circulate every day in order to transport the products to thirty docks in Vendenheim and to send them back to these warehouses at the rate of a thousand pallets.
Three simultaneous preparations
This organization marks the start of a new logic for Hager: “We are moving from logistics close to the factory to logistics close to the customer,” explained Ralph Fürderer. Until then, the logistics capacities were established at the exit of the production lines, disseminated between the 23 factories of the group, unlike the logic of concentration implemented on the new platform.
The site will become fully operational during the first quarter of next year. It will then stock 30,000 references: oversized products (trunking, large cabinets, etc.) and modular products (circuit breakers, switches, etc.).
This second family benefits from a highly automated order preparation system using the most recent technologies. Some 58,000 small ferries follow a multiple shuttle route. The warehouse is arranged in three aisles making it possible to prepare three orders simultaneously.
French distribution in Rhône-Alpes
It will employ 100 people (50 for the moment), the vast majority in transfer from the neighboring plant of Bischwiller (Bas-Rhin). The redistribution of products in France will take place from a platform of nearly 20,000 m2 in Chaponnay (Isère), which Hager is planning to open in the course of next year, on a Rhenus Logistics site which will be its on-site service provider.
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