Bi-Esse

Bi-Esse, an Italian electrical materials distributor founded in 1980 with 20 branch offices across Italy and four abroad, had outgrown its fragmented warehouse infrastructure at its Fossano headquarters. Logistics operations were spread across multiple acquired buildings, undermining efficiency and accuracy. As order volumes grew, manual picking processes in the wire cutting and small-item areas — which accounted for 70% of warehouse transactions — produced an error rate of 0.1% (one error per 1,000 picks). In a distribution business where customers depend on next-day delivery of precise electrical components, even a fraction-of-a-percent error rate generated complaints and operational waste at scale.

In 2014, Bi-Esse commissioned Simco Consulting to design a fully automated 11,000-square-meter warehouse at Fossano, with Rockwell Automation providing the control architecture and Cubar (a Rockwell Recognized System Integrator) handling turnkey installation. The automation backbone is Rockwell's Integrated Architecture platform: Allen-Bradley Compact GuardLogix 5370 and GuardLogix 5570 Safety Controllers managing stacker cranes, servo-drives, and conveyor systems over a unified EtherNet/IP network. The wire warehouse uses a 2,000 kg-capacity stacker crane handling 60 combined transports per hour. The small-items warehouse deploys three stacker cranes across three corridors serving 30,000 drawers, with operators guided by touchscreens and weight-verification systems that automatically flag picking discrepancies before drawers are returned to shelves.

The automated warehouse delivered measurable improvements across accuracy and throughput from the outset:

• Error rate: reduced from 0.1% to 0.005% — a 20x improvement (from 1 error per 1,000 picks to 1 per 20,000)
• Operator productivity: increased from 45 picks per hour to 120 picks per hour on average
• Order cut-off time: extended to late evening, enabling next-morning delivery for orders placed after business hours
• Projected ROI: four years per warehouse

Personnel previously assigned to manual picking were reassigned to higher-value logistics and sales roles, and overall order fulfillment speed improved across all branch offices served by the central warehouse.

• Centralize before automating: consolidating fragmented warehouse space into a single purpose-built facility was a prerequisite for achieving automation gains at Bi-Esse's scale.
• Weight verification closes the loop: integrating automated weight checks at each picking bay catches errors before they ship, driving the order-of-magnitude accuracy improvement.
• Engage a domain-specialist integrator: pairing a controls vendor (Rockwell Automation) with an automation-specialized integrator (Cubar) de-risked a complex, multi-system deployment.
• Plan for workforce transition early: reassigning operators to added-value roles rather than reducing headcount improved buy-in and preserved institutional knowledge.
• Measure ROI per zone: scoping a four-year payback per warehouse allows incremental justification as each area goes live.