Automation in the warehouse: Displays for the retail business
By Marcus Schick I 4 minute read
14/05/2025
At DACHSER’s Berlin Brandenburg logistics center, a partially automated system for display building sets a new milestone for work in the warehouse. Customized sales displays are put together safely, quickly, and with significantly less effort than before—to the benefit of customers and employees alike.
In retail, sales displays are part of the standard repertoire. They are the “face” of promotional campaigns—eye-catching, customized, and almost indispensable for the seasonal business, especially in the food sector. One of the value-added services DACHSER offers its customers is to build displays for them. The demands placed on this service are intensifying: order volumes fluctuate, turnaround times are increasingly fast, and complexity continues to rise, all leading to a greater workload for warehouse employees.
DACHSER’s contract logistics experts have responded to this challenge at the Berlin Brandenburg logistics center in Schönefeld by launching the DACHSERnetwork’s first semiautomated system for display building. The results are greater efficiency, consistent quality, and a noticeable reduction in employee workload. “To find the best way to meet our requirements, we worked with the Italian manufacturer Tosa to develop a system that didn’t yet exist on the market,” explains Michael Mayer, Department Head CL Consulting at DACHSER’s Head Office. He implemented the project together with the contract logistics team at the Schönefeld branch. “With the new system, we’re taking an important step in the automation of warehouse processes in contract logistics at Dachser.”
From one-off to mass production
Every year, over 150,000 displays leave the Schönefeld branch on CHEP quarter pallets. These displays have been specially assembled and packaged for customers who deliver to food retailers. “Manual production of these displays was time-consuming, labor-intensive, and difficult to scale. What’s more, there were fluctuations in demand with rising order peaks, plus the need to ensure consistent quality and minimize the risk of transport damage,” reports Falk Wenk, Contract Logistics Manager at DACHSER’s Berlin Brandenburg logistics center. The desire for automation took concrete form, and three years ago, a project was launched with the Technology Solutions team from the Contract Logistics Consulting department at the Head Office.
After a high-intensity testing and development phase, DACHSER was able to start implementation with Tosa in January 2024. The blueprints for this technological innovation were taken from practice, a process in which Maximilian Ludwig, Warehouse Administration Manager at Schönefeld, played a central role as part of his master’s thesis. He was heavily involved in developing the concept, speaking to employees and examining needs and customer requirements, in order to lay the foundations for the not inconsiderable investment in Schönefeld.
150.000
displays are assembled and packaged for customers annually at the Berlin Brandenburg logistics center.
Where technology meets efficiency
In August 2024, the warehouse in Schönefeld got the go-ahead to assemble the U-shaped system on an area measuring 43 x 14 meters. An important part of the setup is its seamless integration into Mikado, DACHSER’s warehouse management system. The display packaging line was launched on schedule at the beginning of 2025. Since then, 90 percent of display finishing at the Berlin Brandenburg logistics center has taken place on the new packaging line—with less manual effort than ever before. Warehouse employees continue to assemble the individual display cartons on the quarter pallets and ensure that they are loaded correctly, referring to large monitors that display the specifications as graphics.
The new system takes care of strapping, wrapping, labeling, and assembling the quarter pallets on a euro pallet, which is then ready for transport to retailers. “The semiautomatic system relieves our employees of routine work and physically strenuous activities as far as possible, freeing them up for more demanding tasks,” Mayer says.
You can find out more about the services of DACHSER Contract Logistics on the company’s website.
The semiautomatic system relieves our employees of routine work and physically strenuous activities as far as possible, freeing them up for more demanding tasks.
“With over 120 strappings and more than 100 wrappings per hour, our display packaging line enables a smooth, highly standardized process with consistent quality,” Wenk says. “This delivers a significant improvement in our processes.”
“Automated contract logistics solutions must be maximally customer-oriented and efficient, as well as scalable and fully digitally integrated. The connection to Mikado gives us end-to-end control and transparency in custom display building,” Mayer says. The system is an important development for the efficient processing of value-added services for customers—not to mention a further tile in the mosaic of progressive automation in the warehouse.
You can get a glimpse of the new facility in this video.
