The challenge
Swiss coffee brand Nespresso, renowned for its premium reputation, prides itself on its high-quality customer experience. As part of its continued investment in delivering excellent customer satisfaction, the company needed an automation system which could accurately handle complex orders and provide the flexibility to meet fluctuations in demand.
The solution
ABB has designed and supplied, through Nespresso’s 3rd party Logistics partner ID Logistics, an innovative automated system incorporating robots, software material management and SCADA systems, for depalletization, picking and packing orders. Delivering fast, accurate and reliable performance, the system has improved order preparation accuracy to 99.9 percent, and improved productivity by 200 percent.
The application
An ABB IRB660 robot is used for depalletizing boxes containing sleeves of coffee pods, along with four FlexPicker IRB 360 robots for picking and preparing the customer orders. The system is backed up by ABB’s customer support, providing access to automation experts 24/7.
Nespresso has been shaping the global coffee culture since 1986, providing high quality coffee blends to consumers worldwide. With a focus on delivering excellent customer satisfaction and to improve its customer service, Nespresso wanted to increase the order preparation accuracy and quality for its direct-to-consumer orders.
Nespresso’s e-commerce orders in Benelux are fulfilled through its logistics service provider ID Logistics (IDL) at a distribution centre in Tilburg, Netherlands. IDL’s facility handles many thousands of coffee orders every year and since 2021 had been using a manual pick and pack process.
With customer demand for its coffee products continuing to grow, Nespresso wanted to find a way to automate its order handling system, including processing complex orders involving multiple coffee blends.
“With Nespresso seeing continued growth in demand for its products, the company was keen to see how an automated order handling could help,” explains Dominic Maas, Site Manager at IDL. “The system needed to be able to handle more and larger volumes of coffee orders daily, while still delivering high quality levels.”
An efficient system
ABB’s solution is an innovative automating system for depalletization, picking and packing. The system consists of two main stages where boxes of coffee sleeves are first depalletized from their original packaging, before being picked and placed into customer orders.
During the first stage, boxes of coffee sleeves are depalletized by ABB’s IRB660 robot. There are 40 pallet locations and SKUs that the robot can easily access to select the coffee boxes required. The IRB660 receives an order from the material flow control (MFC) system and places the correct boxes on to the conveyor, where they are fed to the box cutter. Boxes are opened to reveal the coffee sleeves and then relayed to the picking channel via conveyor.
Carts for the customer orders are on a separate automation line, which goes through four pick and place stations depending on the coffee required for the order. Picking and placing is carried out by four ABB FlexPicker IRB 360 robots, which can accurately and reliably handle up to 150 picks per minute. Each picking cell has 10 channels available that provide the robot with 10 different coffee variations, and each robot can pick up to five sleeves at a time. The correct coffee sleeves are selected and added to the order.
Finally, the cart is fed into the packing station, where the system tells the operator which box size is needed to fulfil the order. The operator manually places the box against the machine, with the batch of coffee sleeves automatically pushed into the box. The operator adds any extra customer accessories, for example chocolates, before closing the box and applying the label to complete the order.
ABB has also supplied the software, which acts as the material management system (MMS). The software sits under Nespresso’s warehouse management system (WMS) and controls the material flow during production as well as the associated flow of information with full transparency. There is a full ABB SCADA system too for operator interfacing and to provide KPI visualization.
Improving order accuracy and productivity
“We chose the ABB system as it had the most innovative and convincing design to meet the project requirements,” explained Dominic Maas. “One thing that stands out is the pick and place mechanism while the conveyor is running. The ABB’s FlexPicker can pick one sleeve or multiple sleeves from the box and place them in the moving cart.”
Another highlight for IDL and Nespresso is the intuitive user interface. Screens on the interface show a map of the robot systems with all sections. Operators are alerted if there is an error and can access advice on suggested actions to solve the problem. As a result, IDL and Nespresso can benefit from improved performance tracking as reliability and throughput can all be tracked and quantified.
Since installing the new automation system, both Nespresso and IDL have been impressed with the results. Nespresso has been able to improve order preparation accuracy to 99.9 percent, and the improvement in quality means that customer complaints and rejections are now limited to just 0.06 percent of the orders.
The flexibility of the robotic system means that it can run according to changing customer demands. The automatic system can deliver a high throughput of 625 orders/hour, enabling IDL and Nespresso to improve productivity by 200 percent.
“We have been delighted with the system, which is increasing our agility and our ability to fulfil customer orders more efficiently with less errors,” said Sorin Geambasu, Global Warehouse Efficiency Manager, Nespresso.
There are further benefits as Nespresso does not need to re-invest in boxes and pallets. The new automated system uses the same boxes and pallets as were used in the original manual operation.
Providing additional support
ABB hasn’t just supplied the technology. The company has also provided first-line training for IDL’s staff, so they are aware of how to carry out small fixes safely. Additionally, ABB supplies a high level of support to its customers after installation and delivery. The support department is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week for remote support and on-site interventions if necessary.
“I'm incredibly happy with the support ABB gives us,” said Maas. “ABB’s experts are always available when we need help, or if we want a modification. Support is just a phone call away, and if we need them on-site, they’re here within a few hours.”
Extending the use of automation
The ABB solution has surpassed expectations in overcoming Nespresso and IDL’s challenges, and both companies are looking for further opportunities to extend the use of automation.
“This is the first time that such an innovative automated solution has been implemented for Nespresso,” concluded Geambasu. “We are always reviewing ways to improve customer satisfaction and automation has proven itself as a way of achieving this. We are now looking at how we can implement this type of solution in other facilities to better serve our customers in the future.”
