Dairies are increasingly turning to Cimcorp solutions for their handling and distribution. The dairy industry is a high throughput business subject to strict sell by dates; it is labor-intensive with a lot of heavy repetitive lifting in a harsh chill store environment. With prices being set by a competitive market, improved profitability comes from streamlining operations and lowering costs.

Cimcorp's MultiPick and MultiplePick solutions are used for all kinds of dairy products; milk, cream, yoghurts, cheese etc. MultiPick handles crates, and MultiplePick can pick one or several rows of gable-top products from a crate.

Some of the common characteristics for all dairy distribution:

• Labor-intensive manual handling
• Harsh environment; typically 0°C - +4°C in chill stores
• Very repetitive work with heavy lifting – resulting in high staff turnover and difficulties to recruit in many areas
• Picking accuracy is often a problem with cost penalties resulting from erroneous deliveries
• Multi-shift operation
• Number of SKUs are increasing as are supermarkets’ service level demands
• Multi-shift processing operations to be combined with very tight delivery schedules to the retail side of the business.

All of these factors plus the use of standard crates and trays make dairy distribution an ideal MultiPick application. Crates and trays which can be used all the way to the retailer’s shelf cut total supply chain cost - not just distribution center cost.

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