A new distribution centre, a major automation investment or a full re-layout is one of the largest and least-reversible decisions your operation will make. Simulation lets you prove the design will perform before you commit the capital. Spreadsheets and static forecasts were never designed for the volatility operations now plan around.
Read the Marks and Spencer’s distribution centre case study Book a call with our simulation team
Reduce capital risk – Prove throughput – Remove bottlenecks early – Design in future flexibility
Turning Uncertainty into confidence
With capital investment for a new or replacement facility running into millions, you need certainty that it will meet both current and future demand. Simulation gives you that certainty in advance, with evidence to back the strategy you take to the board, so you can:
- Test the design before it exists. Compare alternative layouts, equipment configurations and operating rules, and see how each performs against your busiest day rather than an average one.
- Find the best balance between performance and capital expenditure. Understand exactly what each increment of investment buys you in throughput, and where it stops paying for itself.
- Understand how the whole facility behaves together. See how many separate handling systems, product types and order channels interact dynamically, which is precisely what a spreadsheet cannot show you. – Decide on your own data. Models are built on your real SKU, order and stock profiles, so the results stand up to scrutiny from the board and from Finance. – See the trade-offs before you commit. More throughput can raise energy use and operating cost, and a layout tuned for speed alone can be less resilient. A model makes those consequences visible in advance rather than after the change is made.
What a digital twin does for a distribution facility
Our simulation experts build a working model, often called a digital twin, of your proposed or existing facility. It reproduces the whole operation: goods in, storage and retrieval, picking, sortation, packing and dispatch, across every product type and order channel you handle.
Because the model is built from your own order, SKU and stock profiles, you can test “what if?” scenarios in a risk-free virtual environment: peak trading, volume growth, a shift in the store-to-ecommerce mix, a different automation specification, a change in shift patterns. You see the consequences before any of it is built, commissioned or committed to.
The model is not a black box. We build an accessible scenario manager so your logistics specialists can create multiple scenarios and stress-test assumptions, and a 3D animated view that makes the facility’s behaviour legible to everyone who has to sign the decision off.
Scope is set by the decision, not by how much of the facility can be reproduced. We start from the question you need answered, because a model built to settle one decision gives faster and clearer results than a full replica built for its own sake.
Where simulation earns its place
We work with retailers, third-party logistics providers, manufacturers and distributors at the moments when a facility decision is on the table:
- Designing a new distribution or fulfilment centre
- Investing in automation or materials-handling equipment
- Reconfiguring or re-laying out an existing facility
- Redesigning a network across multiple sites
- Moving to omnichannel, or absorbing ecommerce growth
- Bidding for or onboarding a third-party logistics contract
- Clearing a persistent bottleneck or capacity constraint
- Building a business case the board and CFO will accept
If any of those is live for you now, a short conversation will tell you quickly whether a model is worth building. The decisions that gain most are the ones with a clear question already attached, which is what that first conversation is for.
Proven on facilities at full complexity
Marks and Spencer’s distribution centre
Serious capital risk removed, and the materials-handling design validated before the spend was committed. The client went into implementation knowing the design would perform, with additional functionality and flexibility already designed in to absorb future business change, reducing their future cost-risk exposure.
What made it exceptional was the scale and the interaction: a circa 900,000 sq ft facility, around 150,000 SKUs, thousands of orders an hour, more than sixteen distinct handling sub-systems, and two order channels, national distribution and ecommerce, running through one building. Every scenario was tested against the client’s own operating data, with 3D visualisation that let every stakeholder in the decision see how the facility would behave.
The suite of FlexSim models we developed with ITI Group not only allowed us to validate our Materials Handling Equipment designs, but also to identify areas of the solution where we’d benefit from additional functionality or flexibility to react to future business requirements. We were therefore able to incorporate these changes pre-implementation, reducing our future cost risk exposure.”
Paul Watkins – Logistics Strategy and Design Workstream Lead
Build confidence before capital
If you are designing, automating or reconfiguring a facility, the cheapest moment to find a problem is before it is built. The call itself has one job: agreeing the question a model would need to answer.
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