Global fashion brand Mango is a Spain-based designer and producer of apparel, shoes and accessories for women, men and children — generating a turnover of 2.2 billion euros with some 15,000 employees.

In Barcelona, Mango implemented a highly automated, multi-channel distribution center, which today supplies more than 2,200 retail orders in over 110 countries.

Having experienced strong historical growth, Mango opted to consolidate its decentralized warehouse network into one central fulfillment center. Major goals were to increase service levels by reducing lead times and process costs.

Covering 260,000 square feet, the new fulfillment center has an order-fulfillment capacity of 30,000 individual items. It handles 6,000 cartons per hour in the inbound area, and nearly 6,000 in the outbound area.

Because of the system's scalability, Mango has been able to meet its growth plans, while acquiring the flexibility to adjust to changes in order structure or its business model.

Looking for a vendor to support the facility’s “one-touch” goods-receiving operation, Mango choose to invest in a standardized inbound and storage system from TGW. Up to 6,000 cartons per hour are unloaded from trucks and placed directly on extendable conveyor belts. Following a conformity check, they’re stored in an automated mini-load warehouse, which provides efficient, high-dense storage of individual cartons with high throughput rates.

The mini-load supplies all downstream processes, including:

• Order fulfillment (single items): The mini-load supplies the shuttle system, which feeds sorter induct stations or goods-to-person (GTP) picking workstations.
• Order fulfillment (full cases): Full cases are forwarded directly to outbound for shipping.
• Consolidation: The mini-load consolidates pre-picked cartons containing flat or hanging garments, which are then forwarded to outbound for shipping.

By implementing TGW’s one-touch receiving, Mango was able to decrease manual touches to a minimum prior to picking, and reduce operational costs, due to increased process speed and quality.

After retrieval from the mini-load bulk storage, cartons are inserted into totes for higher performance rates. They are then buffered in a shuttle system for fast feeding of the GTP- picking workstations or sorter induct stations, depending on order type.

Cross-belt sorters are used to process most orders. Up to 25,000 items per hour are inducted at the ergonomic in-feed stations. The sorters transport individual items to chutes, where they are offloaded according to pre-cubing algorithms. At the end of the chutes, items are packed in order cartons.

Prioritized orders, non-sortable items and slow-moving items are processed at high-performance picking workstations.

All orders that come either from the sorters or the GTP workstations are consolidated in the automatic mini-load warehouse, and from there are transported to the dispatch area. A linear sorter routes the order cartons to the dedicated lanes, where nearly 6,000 cartons per hour are loaded into trucks. 

"We are taking the next step towards modernizing our fulfillment network with this new distribution center,” says Antonio Pascual, Mango’s director of supply chain. “This means that we will be able to continue offering our customers the best possible service in the years ahead."