• 
• Germany
• E-grocery

Brightpick helps German e-grocer Knuspr unlock 3-hour delivery in Munich

Knuspr, one of Germany’s fastest-growing e-grocers and part of Rohlik Group, has deployed hundreds of Brightpick robots in its Munich, Berlin, and Vienna fulfillment centers to power fast, high-quality grocery deliveries within three hours.

Challenges

Thanks to its wide assortment of products, Knuspr has large average order sizes consisting of dozens of items per order. Its Munich fulfillment center holds 20,000 SKUs and has multiple picking zones to accommodate different types of products, such as ambient, fresh, chilled, and frozen. This means that once items are picked in each picking zone, they need to be consolidated into complete orders before they can be dispatched to customers.

The company was looking for a flexible robotic solution to automate its post-pick order buffer, consolidation, and dispatch process. Knuspr therefore turned to Brightpick to automate its dispatch process and drive down fulfillment costs.

“We needed automation to make our operation more efficient, stable and scalable for growth.”

Aleš Malucha, Chief Automation Officer at Rohlik Group

Solution

Knuspr installed 53 Brightpick Dispatcher robots in Munich to automate its ambient and chilled dispatch.

Order totes from each picking zone are delivered to the dispatch area via conveyor. Brightpick Dispatchers retrieve the totes from the conveyor and sort them into complete orders ready for driver pickup. In addition, the robots can also temporarily store picked orders in a storage buffer until they need to be dispatched. This enables Knuspr to pre-pick orders in advance during off-peak hours and ship more orders during peak hours. 

“We selected Brightpick because of the fast design and installation time, stable and high-performing product and Robots-as-a-Service pricing model.”

Aleš Malucha, Chief Automation Officer at Rohlik Group

At the time of installation, Knuspr was shipping 2,000 orders per day and projected growth to 5,000 within six months – making Brightpick’s fast deployment and effortless scalability a crucial advantage.

“The installation was very fast. It only took us three months from design to production, delivery, installation, commissioning and go-live. We were able to ramp up performance very fast.”

Aleš Malucha, Chief Automation Officer at Rohlik Group

The entire installation process took three months from design to go-live, including less than one month for on-site installation. Knuspr’s parent company, Rohlik Group, previously piloted the Brightpick solution in its Prague fulfillment center, which made the Munich installation process seamless for the company. Knuspr also had the benefit of simulating the Brightpick solution before installation to ensure it would hit the required performance levels.

Knuspr needed to maintain existing operations during the installation process, as this was its only fulfillment center in the area. To achieve this, the project was installed in three phases.

Phase 1 was installed in August 2023 and automated half of the ambient dispatch area. Phase 2, which went live in early October, doubled the size of the installation in the ambient area. Phase 3 went live in January 2024 and saw Knuspr automate the chilled dispatch area in the same warehouse.

Knuspr purchased the solution via Robots-as-a-Service (RaaS) pricing, which meant it invested minimal capital upfront and achieved immediate ROI and cost savings.

Results

In just three months, Brightpick enabled Knuspr to:

• Increase peak throughput by 20%
• Offer customers 3-hour delivery and 15-minute delivery slots
• Reduce labor for order consolidation and buffering to zero
• Extend warehouse operations to 20 hours per day
• Eliminate human errors from the dispatch process
• Improve employee satisfaction by relocating employees to less physically demanding jobs

Following the success of this installation, Rohlik Group installed additional Brightpick robots in its Berlin and Vienna fulfillment centers.

About Brightpick
Brightpick is a leader in AI-powered robotic solutions for warehouses. The company’s multi-purpose AI robots enable warehouses of any size to fully automate order picking, buffering, consolidation, dispatch, and stock replenishment. The award-winning Brightpick solution takes just weeks to deploy and allows companies to keep their warehouse labor to a minimum. Headquartered near Cincinnati, Ohio, Brightpick has more than 250 employees and hundreds of AI robots deployed with customers across the U.S. and Europe.