Dixons Carphone plc.

Appliance clamp for fast goods turnover

Just quickly go online, order, and the ordered products are on your doorstep in a few days. Or make a visit to your favourite electronics retailer on the way home to get the newest LCD TV in time for the evening football match. A normal course of action these days – many times every day. It doesn’t matter whether it concerns televisions, refrigerators or washing machines. The changed shopping habits are a challenge for the suppliers of brown and white goods that they are solving among other things with attachments from KAUP GmbH & Co. KG (KAUP) and sophisticated internal logistics processes. Like Dixons Carphone plc. (Dixons).

Dixons is the leading seller of brown and white goods in Europe. In its more than 1,300 stores in the British Isles alone and through its online shop, the concern successfully sells entertainment electronics, telecommunication products and household appliances among other things. In order to be able to keep its complete portfolio in every shop and supply its customers promptly, smooth internal logistics processes are essential for Dixons. For this, the electronics concern relies on a series of decentralised distribution centres. In Newark alone, the largest centre for the concern near Sheffield, there is an area of more than 1.5 million square metres, which is the largest distribution centre in Europe. Its area corresponds to roughly 65 football pitches.

How does Dixons manage to have all of its products ready for dispatch at the right time on this massive site? On the one hand with an elaborate racking concept and the use of an armada of reach trucks, and on the other hand with over 100 KAUP appliance clamps of the T404-1L series from the Aschaffenburg engineering company. “These attachments are particularly suitable for handling brown and white goods”, says Johannes Pilzweger, KAUP project leader for Dixons. “And the clamps can also be combined with a wide range of lift trucks.”

As the reach trucks already have their own sideshift, these two appliance clamps from KAUP are not needed. That saves weight and “as a result, Dixons increases even more the very good residual load capacity of the clamps” says Pilzweger, who has been looking after Dixons for a number of years. “The increased load capacity can be decisive in the day-to-day business.” What Dixons does not do without is the uniform distribution of the clamp pressure due to pressure plates with parallel guides. The goal is to not damage the load and to deliver it to the end customer intact.

And their demands on TVs, tablets, dishwashers and so on are constantly changing. These result in new challenges for Dixons and the logistics. The concern is preparing itself for these together with KAUP. “We are currently considering which clamps will be most suitable in the future and with which accessories the current machines can be upgraded to extend their service life” is how Pilzweger, the project leader, sums up the discussions. For this reason, for example, other clamps are being used for test purposes. Another idea is testing devices to check and record the clamp pressure. In the end, Dixons wants to adapt to the shopping habits of its customers and be prepared for changing customer demands.