Snellmanin Kokkikartano Oy is well-known on the Finnish market for its ready meals cooked with homemade recipes. When Kokkikartano decided to build a new logistics centre, the food company was looking for a long-term partner rather than a one-time supplier. Cooperation that would last for decades, creating multiple projects together following the company’s growth rate and changing intralogistics needs.
The new building of 3,000 square meters will accommodate an automated warehouse with shuttles, conveying system and picking technology to make all the functional zones reach their maximum productivity. The new system will support Kokkikartano’s goal to double the volumes within the next 10 years.
The common ground and a speed start into partnership
Quality, customer service, and homemade authenticity are the top 3 values for Kokkikartano to preserve and communicate. SSI SCHAEFER, also being a family-owned company, realizes and shares the importance and fundamental value of these aspects by placing quality as its main working principle.
Another critical point was the supplier’s ability to deliver the complete solution from one source, maintaining and guaranteeing the quality and tailoring the systems to better serve Kokkikartano’s business processes and needs.
“SSI SCHAEFER has strong local maintenance support in Finland. If we ever have any issues or requests after the system is in operation, it will be much easier and faster to deal with the local team”, - comments Tea Tilander, Production Director at Kokkikartano.
The perfect process
In 2021 Kokkikartano assessed current processes and available resources and defined the need for a highly automated material handling solution for its new facility in Kerava.
“The existing warehouse is fully operated by manual labour and has a serious lack of storage space. To keep up with the demand, we have had to partly outsource the storage”, – shares Tea Tilander.
In the new automated solution, goods will arrive from the production line and they can follow one of the 3 main paths: storage, picking, or direct dispatch. The items can be placed in the 2-aisle automated warehouse equipped with SSI Flexi shuttles until they are needed to be retrieved for an order. SSI Flexi will ensure over 40,000 tote storage locations with room for future growth as the business will further develop.
Alternatively, the goods can directly follow a conveyor line to the picking zone. Order picking will be done manually with the help of pick by light technology for faster and error-free picking and a conveying system to deliver the goods to the right zone.
Then the picked products will be moved downstairs to the palletizing area, where they are palletized and then shipped to the customers.
Thinking about the future
The new solution will provide 50% more storage locations for totes compared to the current resources. In the future, the system will be expanded following Kokkikartano’s growth rate.
The solution will be handed over to Kokkikartano in Summer 2023.
SSI SCHAEFER | February 2022