SCA Normande, part of Group E.Leclerc, chooses ULMA for its automated warehouse in France

SCA Normande, a supply center for E.Leclerc supermarkets in Normandy, the West Indies and Reunion Island, turned to automated intralogistics leader ULMA Handling Systems with the need for a new warehouse to handle its dry goods and install a new pallet storage system, as well as robotic palletizing of heterogeneous packages. The French company's goal was to improve its service to stores and keep pace with its growing business activity.

To solve the need presented by SCA Normande, the ULMA Handling Systems team designed a system that receives multi-reference pallets from the wholesaler or manufacturer in order to prepare store orders on multi-reference pallets. The solution developed and implemented in the warehouse located in Hauts de Glos, has a reception area that allows SCA Normande to increase productivity, reduce the cycle time of control, sorting and storage, and ensure its reliability.

Storage and order picking

The building containing the entire system is 42 meters high in the area of the automated pallet storage system, which has 10 stacker cranes in aisles 100 meters long. The total surface area of the installation is 4,500 m2, in which a storage capacity of 30,000 pallets has been achieved and the stacker cranes can transport 1-ton pallets.

On the other hand, the order picking area consists of several mezzanines where 66% of the depalletizing process is automated. For order picking, the packages are stored in trays in a miniload with 14 stacker cranes and more than 100,000 spaces. These packages are extracted in the sequence requested by the automatic palletizer. 7 IKPAL palletizing robots developed by ULMA Handling Systems in collaboration with Tekniker, a technology center specialized in advanced manufacturing, surface engineering, product engineering and ICT for manufacturing. These robots build mixed pallets with the products that will go to Leclerc supermarkets.  These are products of different sizes and weights, which have to arrive in a specific order for the robots to build stable pallets. The WMS software that calculates this sequence was also developed at ULMA.

Teknopolis: ULMA on TV

Recently, the Basque public broadcaster EITB aired a report on the installation designed and built by ULMA on its television channels in the Teknopolis program, promoted by Elhuyar and specializing in scientific and technological dissemination. The program covered the complexities of the project, as well as the development process to meet the needs of SCA Normande, which officially inaugurated the plant a year and a half ago.