An online shopping cart and catalogue are only the first steps in e-commerce retail success. The trick is ensuring that the customers receive their products in a quick, accurate, and efficient manner once they place an order. That’s where fulfilment services come in.
The SkyNet Worldwide Express network stretches across 7 continents, providing the Global business community with fast, reliable, and secure express delivery services to over 209 countries and territories worldwide. SkyNet’s wide range of offerings include logistics and distribution, door to door services, worldwide courier solutions, airfreight services, return logistics, as well as import activities.
After a rigorous selection process that included several meetings, presentations and discussions, SkyNet elected to partner with Span for its strategic project in its new distribution centre in Beirut. The final design incorporated a selective pallet racking area, a stand-alone shelving system on a multi-tier mezzanine of 533 square meters, a conveyor system that ensured optimal product movement, as well as an intelligent processing area to efficiently consolidate, pack, and distribute orders accurately and efficiently. The pallet racking system, with over 1,300 pallet positions, was primarily utilized to accommodate all the bulk storage, while the stand-alone shelving, with an approximate area of 1,600 square meters, catered to the retail and e-commerce business.
As for the mechanized transportation conveyor system, its primary function was to send the picked lines in totes to the ground floor where the orders are consolidated in ‘put to light’ stations. Once the orders are complete, they are sent to the packing and labelling stations. The put to light solution allowed SkyNet to use simple light directed technology for the segregation and sortation of products to be delivered based on predefined destinations. The end results were:
– Expediting picking and sortation operations with less number of resources
– Minimizing the human error factors
– Securing a paperless operation
– Ensuing a high return on investment.
The above design, along with the utilization of specialized Jungheinrich Material Handling Equipment from Germany, allowed SkyNet to deliver the orders to their clients faster, more accurately, and with higher efficiency, while keeping costs to a minimum. “We are actively adopting agile and future oriented software as well as the latest technologies to keep our warehouse operations optimised at all times” , commented Mr. Mourad Aoun, SkyNet CEO. “We were looking at a picking and palletising solution that is effective, flexible and that can respond to changing business conditions. We were able to successfully implement best practice workflows by working with the right partner”, he added.
‘’Logistics plays a very important role in e- commerce. It refers not just to the last mile delivery of parcels to customers but also the overall e-fulfilment strategies. Only those logistics companies that have the right manpower & technology to swiftly and accurately locate, package & dispatch e-commerce orders can play this game & survive the challenges’’, stated Mr. Wadih Assouad, Span’s Head of Projects Support Unit.
