Electrical Distributor

Electrical distributor upscales with DIDO AI

Earlier this year a well-known electrical distributor moved to and developed a new warehouse in partnership with SEC Storage, to streamline its operations, maximise space and better serve its customers and partners across the UK. They’re innovators, and AI has played a major part. The move has aligned with its broader strategy to expand its position in the market and – quite simply – grow.

The electrical distributor acquired several subsidiaries to create the single source warehouse, with around 10-12,000 SKUs.

There’s no half measures when you make major investments and rather heavyweight strategic decisions in 2024. How can you be certain? AI is adding a comfy layer of support for projects like this. SEC Storage – using DIDO its AI-driven machine learning platform – was tasked with designing the new warehouse.

What did DIDO do?

DIDO assessed what the client needed for their warehouse. It used these requirements to create a plan that balanced the different options and find the best way to optimise warehouse space.

Developed by SEC, DIDO orchestrates three daughter applications to produce an optimal warehouse design. The first, ELSA, analyses every item stored in the warehouse and figures out the best equipment and technology combination to store them efficiently.

CLARA then takes those findings and creates detailed warehouse designs. It looks at thousands of possible layouts to find the most efficient way to organise the space.

Finally, the ELISA software used a digital model (or “digital twin”) to simulate how the warehouse would work with the chosen design. It checks to see if the design meets the client’s goals and calculates important performance measures to predict the return on investment (ROI).

By going through this process, SEC Storage designed the most efficient and cost-effective warehouse for the electrical distributor. DIDO recommended two potential solutions; a traditional pick tower system and a Geekplus robotic shuttle system. The robotic shuttle system was selected as it reduced the pick force from 16 to 1-2 pickers, making the operation eight times more efficient.

“A typical project takes around 1 – 1.5 years from initial discussions to the final implementation. That timeframe includes all the design work, manufacturing lead-time and commissioning that goes into a robotics project of this type.

“Of this, the conceptual design phase typically only takes around 6-8 weeks, where we go through the full design process, analysing every SKU and simulating various potential solutions, before ultimately arriving at the optimal one. We can complete this rapidly, due to the huge amount of artificial intelligence within DIDO we can fall back on”

However, on this project, we have designed it to be extremely efficient to scale. We are already planning to double storage capacity in just eight overnight shifts in the coming weeks,” adds Harry.

Robotic Shuttle System

The AMR system which DIDO selected, uses up to 40% of the warehouse cube compared to 25% for a traditional multi-tiered shelving system. The robotics system has also provided benefits in terms of velocity, accuracy, safety and sustainability.

The distributor was also able to quickly integrate a new business acquisition into the robotic system with minimal disruption.

How much space was saved?

DIDO’s analysis and the robotic shuttle system significantly improved space efficiency for the warehouse. As mentioned, traditional multi-tiered shelving systems only utilise around 25% of the available warehouse cube, in contrast, the robotic system designed by DIDO was able to utilise up to 40% of it.

This allowed the electrical distributor to more than double its capacity within the same physical footprint, providing plenty of space for future growth and acquisitions.

“When we first implemented the system, we only utilised the lower four metres of height in the warehouse. However, the system was engineered with the capability to expand vertically up to 11 metres in height. This means that the client now has the ability to more than double their overall storage capacity and throughput within the exact same warehouse space.” Harry adds.

Who decides?

Warehousing and logistics has always been a profession which demands problem-solving and tough decisions. AI like SEC’s DIDO doesn’t take key decisions away from humans who have a more nuanced understanding of the strategic requirement, but it does support them, and add a scientific basis for their decision-making.

And its ongoing analysis and recommendations can settle future issues in advance, helping to avoid product obsolescence leading to inefficiency, and utilising machine learning to complete improve product slotting.

AI can take us places we didn’t know we could go, show systems we didn’t know we could afford, at a time when the future is difficult to predict and – critically – it can find a bit more legroom.