For online retailers, fast and reliable order fulfillment is the key component to building consistency and customer loyalty. Quick delivery, coupled with broad product availability, is how one online retailer of an industrial equipment supplier built a global business.
With centers ranging in size from 500,000 to 1.5 million square feet, the company’s automation systems, at the heart of its numerous fulfillment facilities, are crucial. These sophisticated IP-enabled systems communicate with routers, sensors and devices throughout the facility to coordinate all of the stages of order fulfillment.
Many large-scale fulfillment centers operate using edge computing, meaning the data is stored and processed as close as possible to where it’s needed. To facilitate the movement of data necessary for real-time decision making, the online retailer needs to house some of its sensitive IT equipment on the warehouse floor. This harsh environment exposes equipment to dust and other contaminants—and climate control is a challenge.
When existing cooling units were not meeting the online retailer’s fulfillment center’s requirements, it reached out to a provider. Before long, the retailer standardized on a complete system, which combined security and protection from contaminants with a self-contained cooling system, the Blue e+.
The cooling units use an innovative hybrid process that relies on parallel cooling circuits working together based on temperature differences. In addition, an integral heat pipe dissipates heat from the enclosure as soon as the ambient temperature falls below the set point for passive climatization.
Afterward, active climatization is achieved, using the compressor’s cooling circuit—with speed-controlled components for demand-based cooling. This unique inverter technology provides cooling output that is always exactly the amount needed at the time. Not only is energy consumption far less than with conventional technology, but the improved cooling leads to longer service life of the components inside the enclosure, as well as the cooling unit itself.
The provider created a purpose-built system (including dedicated part numbers) that allows it to order new installations from designated global ordering points, which are then installed at the company’s worldwide fulfillment centers.
Like most large companies today, the online retailer has aggressive sustainability goals, which the climate control products are helping them meet. The units deliver superior energy savings, and, when managing large fulfillment centers with complex infrastructures, the energy efficiency that’s delivered by the units contributes significantly to bottom lines.
Rittal North America
(800) 477-4000
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