Food wholesale · EU

Warehouse logistics — AI-optimised forklift routes

The starting situation

In a 10,000 m² warehouse, forklifts currently drive around 1,400 km per month — often sequentially, often by gut feeling and often with empty trips. Poor picking paths, unbalanced slotting and bottlenecks at crossings tie up staff and maintenance; frozen and fresh zones add further constraints.

How we solve it

We combine WMS logs, forklift IoT telemetry and a layout model into route optimisation with task interleaving and genetic algorithms. Orders are bundled spatially, empty return trips are filled with put-away tasks, critical bottlenecks become visible through heatmaps and are reduced through revised slotting suggestions.

What you get

Pilots show around 25% faster transport cycles and savings of 300–350 km per week — for one food wholesaler this meant two fewer forklifts in operation and a shift model streamlined from three shifts to two.

Do you recognise a similar process in your company?

If this use case feels close to your daily work, we can assess data availability, effort and a realistic first MVP together.

Why AI projects work

This use case is based on a real client project. Sector and region are named, the company itself remains anonymous.