The Manutan Group, a BtoB e-commerce player specialising in the distribution of equipment and supplies to businesses and local authorities, launched a new fully automated warehouse last January. This centre is operated by its subsidiary Papeteries Pichon, which sells school supplies. This project is part of the digital transformation of the company’s supply chain and information system.
An automated warehouse as part of Manutan’s digital transformation strategy
In January 2021, a new warehouse based in Veauche, not far from Saint-Étienne, was inaugurated. This building will be used by Papeteries Pichon to anticipate the company’s large order volumes thanks to an increase in storage and preparation area as well as the new order processing capacities put in place. 18,000m2 of storage and 3,600m2 of office space will be available to process 10,000 parcels and 250,000 pickings per day.
But the particularity of this warehouse lies in the automation systems it offers:
- The “Goods to Persons” (GTT) preparation system designed by Savoye, a Dijon-based publisher of customised logistics solutions. The system has 72 autonomous shuttles with a transport capacity of 40,000 bins.
- For the stock, the site is equipped with a stacker crane of about 13,000 pallets including 5 autonomous shuttles.
- An information system that allows all Papeteries Pichon teams to take and transmit orders in digital format.
This strategy of automation and process empowerment has been put in place to meet increasing inventory and efficiency targets. This entire logistics process is designed to meet the peak of activity linked to the start of the school year in September, a period which represents 80% of the subsidiary’s turnover. Henri Adreit, Technology and Data Director of the Manutan Group, spoke about this strategy and the tools offered in this warehouse:
“Papeteries Pichon was the subsidiary, among all those of the Manutan Group, that still operated with a huge amount of paper files, especially in the customer service department. With this new information system, we have actually “cancelled and replaced” the old processes in order to digitalize the entire work chain in the building and the warehouse. Papeteries Pichon is the first subsidiary of the Manutan Group’s “Collectivities” division to have this totally digitalized information system installed, with adaptations appropriate to the sector.”
A digital transition that does not devalue the Manutan Group’s teams
All of the Manutan Group’s IT teams were put to work to deploy these tools, which had already been in use. One of the challenges of implementing these systems was to drastically reduce the amount of paper used in the daily administrative and logistical tasks of the Group’s employees. The brand has now gone paperless, starting with the taking of web orders, which are managed directly by ERP software specially created to comply with this approach.
Thanks to these tools, the company wants to carry out a digital transformation of its supply chain and its information system. The Manutan Group claims that no jobs have been cut, as Grégoire Koudrine, Group Supply Chain Director at Manutan, states:
“We have changed everything, except the teams! And we even want to strengthen them with the creation of jobs with higher added value directly linked to customer issues.”
Around ten positions have been created to manage these innovations: engineers on the new automated systems, supply chain project manager, maintenance technicians for the technologies deployed. Jobs have been upgraded with an increase in skills for managing the new tools: Manutan has set up a training plan for “key users”, particularly in the warehouse, order taking and after-sales service areas, who have in turn been able to train their teams in the operation of these new tools.
Translated from Le groupe Manutan opère une transformation digitale de sa supply chain et de son système d’information
