TVH is shipping 4500 parts' orders a day

The 4500 shipments which TVH makes daily throughout Europe flow from its main warehouse, part of a 60000 m² facility in Waregem, Belgium. Shipments enter the hands of international freight couriers from six consolidation sorters, which separate and aggregate picked items into 3000 box locations and 540 rollout tracks for weighing, packing and labelling.

Linking that shipping activity to storage of 450000 stock-keeping units within the 26000 m² warehouse is 2150 m of conveyors. Parts are stored, according to size and pick frequency, in four distinct locations. There is: a "narrow-aisle" truck area with 3600 pallet locations; an automatic pallet retrieval storage area with 1000 locations; a mini-load area (pictured), with 55000 box locations, that can make 720 in/out movements per hour; and a five-storey warehouse, which has 200000 picking locations, for shelved items.

Virtually every part, every location, every box is marked with bar code and every movement is entered in the facility's computer system.