Leader Computers is saving hours getting stock ready to ship to its resellers following Dematic integrating AutoStore technology within its Sydney warehouse.

Leader Computers supplies exclusively to IT resellers, with a large client base across the country. It distributes products from over 70 vendors, including leading brands such as Microsoft, LG, Lenovo, Ubiquiti, ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI and Corsair. 

Throughout the pandemic, as working from home and home-schooling took off, demand for IT infrastructure exploded. This led to Leader Computers experiencing increased orders from the resellers and more pressure on their warehouse operations.

In response to the increased demand, Leader Computers wanted to upgrade its warehouse with automation that would increase business efficiency, accuracy and productivity, as well as make better use of available space. 

The requirements for this automation project were to save labour, to save warehouse space and for Leader Computers to walk the talk of using technology to improve business, says David Lamb, consulting manager, Dematic.

“The Dematic solution features an AutoStore system with nine robots, three goods-to-person ports, and 6,662 bins,” explains Lamb. “Palletised products are manually delivered to an AutoStore port, where an operator receives and loads them into totes delivered by robots. As receiving tasks are completed, robots collect the totes for delivery to the high-density storage grid. As orders are received, robots then retrieve totes and deliver them in sequence to operators at two carousel ports.” 

The Leader Computers warehouse in Lidcombe in western Sydney stores approximately 8,500 product SKUs, from very large server racks and monitors to very small products such as thumb drives and CPUs.

“Before the Dematic solution was implemented, a large order of a few different types of hard drives would take five to six hours to pick. With this new AutoStore system, they've been able to pick a similar type of order in just 30 minutes,” Lamb explains.

The Dematic solution has already been built for significant annual growth over three years. However, the AutoStore grid can also be easily expanded and progressively filled with bins and additional robots as SKU and storage demand increase, all with minimal interruption to operations.