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A WAREHOUSE
Exquisiteness in its handling, functionality, professionalism and
organization: these are the identity signs of the Pronovias logistics centre in
Barcelona, in which a modern warehouse has been built specialized in one
of the most delicate garments on the market: the wedding dress.
A
wedding dress is something which the most delicate of care seems somehow insufficient. A garment on which dozens of hours are spent from its design
to its confection, and which will only be used once,
demands the greatest of care.
When an article with these special qualities has to be
shipped a great distance, to another continent, and has
to be sent to thousands of sales outlets throughout the
world, its logistics becomes a key element, not only be-
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IN WHITE
cause of the article's value chain itself, but also because
of the very image and prestige of the company.
This is the case of Pronovias, a group of companies specialised in the confection of dresses and accessories for
brides. Under the name of the company with most renown, six companies are devoted to ensuring that each
bride is the most beautiful woman on her wedding day.
The warehouse and the logistics have a great deal to do
with this goal.
Consolidating the warehouse and the business
In order to fulfil this goal, the business group has built a
logistics centre made up of two buildings, of which the
newest, which acts as the main warehouse, came into
operation in December 2005.
The reason for creating this complex arose from the
need to combine in a single location all the production
of the Pronovias Group. Until it was opened, the operations were carried out in two other buildings, one annex
in front of the current one and another some distance
away. The problem was that certain operations, such as
the cutting, reception and storage of raw materials,
were divided between those two annexes, with all the
inconveniences arising from a situation like this.
When the opportunity to purchase the current building
came about, owned previously by a cosmetics laboratory, the company took advantage of this to group all
the production activities in the same centre and in addition to build a warehouse nearby with the aim of having
more capacity for dresses. "This increase in space is in
accordance with the plans for growth of the company
over the next three years. We had outgrown the previous building. In addition, we also wanted to introduce new technologies", says Pere Guirao, industrial
manager of Pronovias.
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The warehouse is integrated into the production operations of the company. The building purchased is devoted
to production operations and dispatches. The car park is
located in the basement. The ground floor is one metre
above street level and is devoted to dispatches. In this
floor there is a reception bay and a dock. There is also an
automated sorter for hung garments.
Dresses and accessories
Above the dispatch floor there is another floor devoted
to the storage of accessories, comprising basically of
packages. Accessories are understood as items of clothing for brides such as veils, frilly petticoats and corsets, among others, along with certain products to be
sent to shops, such as publicity. This warehouse shares
the floor with the canteen, which serves this building
and the annex warehouse.
Above this level is the first floor which is used for finishing. All the manufactured products arrive here, both those coming from Spain, and those made in China, which is
the main supplier of the Pronovias Group. The floor immediately above (the second floor) is the area for cutting,
which is done with all the products made in Spain.
The penultimate floor, the third, is divided into two activities: the raw materials warehouse, which is in charge
of feeding the cutting area on the floor below, and a
multi-use room, destined to uses related with the design and the creation of products. The last floor has a
photographic studio in addition to other activities.
Hanging garments
The recently opened warehouse is an annex to the above
described building and is dedicated to dresses. Specifically, it has a capacity to house 80,000 hung garments. According to Guirao, "it is designed to deal with the peaks
in demand which we experience throughout the year,
but it must also be capable of covering the growth forecast for the next three years".
The property consists of a concrete building and an internal structure comprising of girders and mezzanines.
Hence, no building work was needed to form the floors
and excellent ventilation was also achieved.
"The fundamental requirements we requested in the
design of the warehouse were that very little natural
light should enter –as the colour of the dresses in
stock can be affected, particularly with light-sensitive fabrics– and that there was a constant renewal of
air", says the industrial manager of Pronovias. The product is divided between four floors and an underground
level. The latter is equipped with conventional static
hangers. In floors 0 and 1, the hangers are of a live storage type, with rails along which they move, and in
floors 2 and 3, again, static ones are used.
In order to provide support for the entire warehouse
there is a system of guide rails along which the hangers
with the dresses slide, and there is also an automated
transport system with baskets or carts in which the garments are deposited to be sent to the different floors.
This warehouse communicates with the other building
only through floor 0 (dispatches) and floor 1 (finishing).
The basement and the second and third floors are static.
That is, although the garments arrive to the hanging
areas by means of rails along which special hangers
fitted with wheels slide, once they reach these areas the
dresses must be taken down and hung again in the static
bar designed for this. Thus, each rail runs parallel to two
static hangers in such a manner that the goods can be
moved easily to a place next to their end location.
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AN INTERNATIONAL DRESS
The origins of Pronovias go back to 1922, when this family company started a shop
in Barcelona specialised in lacework, embroidery and silk weaving. The brides of
Catalan high society were attired by El Suizo, as the shop was called back then. In
the nineteen-sixties the Pronovias brand was formed, a pioneer in Spain in launching a prêt-à-porter collection of wedding dresses and in opening the first shop
dedicated entirely to this business. In the next 35 years the company extended its
reach across Spain, Europe, Latin America and North America.
The year 2000 marked a new milestone in the history of the company with the startup of a modern logistics centre in El Prat de Llobregat (Barcelona). The objective of
this centre is to provide a complete service to the 3,200 sales outlets distributed
throughout the world in which the articles of the company are sold, either in its own
shops (120), franchises or through specialized and multi- brand outlets. The company, which in 2005 invoiced 126 million euros, has a workforce of 650 employees
and enjoys a market share of 40% in Spain and 5% in the world. The Pronovias
Group encompasses several brands, such as Pronovias itself, San Patrick, La
Sposa, Atelier Diagonal, White One and SP Collections, for which prestigious international designers lend their services, such as, Valentino, Manuel Mota, Lorenzo
Caprile and Hannibal Laguna, among others.
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STATIC AND LIVE STORAGE
Floors 1 and 2 are equipped with live storage, that is,
the rails along which the hangers move serve as racks
and the garments are hung here are in their storage
position - and so there is no need to transfer them to
another static hanger. Unlike the static area, it is not
necessary for an operator to handle the dresses in the
aisle. Instead, the employee extracts the entire row of
hangers and chooses those needed. Consequently, the
storage capacity is higher as the rows can be positioned
closer to each other.
TECHNICAL DETAILS
Floor length: 54 m
Floor width: 52.9 m
Length of static hangers: 1 of 6.56 m,
1 of 13.97 m and 1 of 67.5 m along each aisle.
Working to order
"The reason for choosing a specific location or system
depends on the delivery conditions. We know to a very
high percentage the destination of the garment when
this enters the warehouse. Basically we work to
order", explains Guirao. Despite this way of working
–very close to just in time–, it is necessary to keep products in the warehouse for some time. "When an item
arrives, it is automatically assigned. All items which
have to be delivered within 15 days are assigned to
the corresponding clients on arrival and, as a consequence, to the different dispatch routes. Those which
exceed this time go to stock", says the industrial
manager of Pronovias. The live storage is distributed by
dispatch routes; it is chaotic and uses the live storage
floors. The stock area is the one made up of static floors.
When it is decided on which day to send the dispatch,
the garments in the live area are pulled out of each row
of dresses, and taken to a sorter, which is in charge of
separating them by client. The items in the static area
must be carefully taken down again and passed to the
live storage rails.
Quality control and storage
The warehouse distributes the products around the
world, with the exception of the dresses made in China
for the United States –these are sent directly without
The dresses are dispatched to the live and
static floors by means of a semi-automated sorter
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Length of live hangers: 3,000 m
Number of static racks: 52 static double
hangers and 9 single hangers per floor
Number of live racks: 325
Number of aisles: 22 per static floor
Load levels: 1 load level for each of the 5 floors
of the structure
Total capacity: 80,000 hanging garments
passing through the Barcelona installations. Around
150,000 dress units manufactured in China arrive to
Spain a year, which in boxes represents an average of
100 a day, stored on pallets of eight boxes each.
When the product leaves China by airplane, specifically
from Hong Kong, a packing list is received in the Spanish
offices and is entered into the computer system. Once
the goods arrive at customs, an initial check is made
against the list. Later, when the goods reach the installations of Pronovias, an exhaustive check is performed
on the dispatch received. This process ensures the
traceability of the product and the company knows when
it will reach the facilities: this is key: "Our standard
delivery service is between six and eight weeks, from
when the client chooses the dress in the shop to when
it is finally delivered to her. A proper follow-up of the
sale trends and a precise forecast of demand allow us
to offer short-term delivery times", says Guirao.
The goods are received, packaged in boxes, in floor 0 of
the production building. An initial check on the products against the packing list is carried out in order to
confirm that the dispatch is correct. Then, the garment
is taken up to the finishing floor by means of a mechanical chain system. Here all the dresses are submitted to
a rigorous quality control check and, once this is passed,
they are ironed, individually packaged and labelled.
The registration operation in the warehouse computer
system automatically generates the good's assignment
and, in consequence, the classification of the product once
the packaging is complete. This classification, performed
prior to being entered into warehouse, enables the dresses
to be stored in the areas designed to this effect. The physical dispatch to the live or static floor is carried out with
the aid of a semi-automated sorter, which groups the
dresses in function of their destination in the warehouse.
The goods are taken out by means of an overhead system
(rails along which the hangers with wheels move).
Location of the goods
We are now working on the integration of a WMS for the
computerised management of the warehouse; at present there are fixed locations for every model. When
doing the picking, the operator is guided by a handheld
terminal which is sent instructions by radio frequency.
The products for each route, as they are pre-classified,
are extracted directly by pushing them along the rail or
by passing them from the static hanger to this rail and
moving them to the area with an automated sorter of 30
exits with two stages, that is, more than one order can
be prepared in each. Interspersed between are separators with the details of the client and the dresses are
packed in special bags of four.
The special macro-bags are hung inside the vehicles. For
dispatches to countries to which it is not possible to
send the dresses stored hung due to their distance, for
example to Japan or Australia, the dresses are stored in
boxes in floor 0 of the production building and later
loaded into lorries. "We distribute the orders over the
week. Deliveries are made to some countries once
every seven days –in the case of Spain, every two–,
while to others it is every 15 days", notes Guirao. When
the order is prepared, the shop is informed, along with
its contents and the approximate date when they will receive it, in function of the contract they have with the
logistics operator.
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