Automotive spare parts warehouse: automated solutions

Today, spare parts logistics requires immediate availability and responsiveness to reduce downtime and losses, rather than mere efficiency, especially in aftermarket spare parts. The main challenges in aftermarket spare parts management include a high variety of low-turnover SKUs, irregular pick-ups, stringent cut-offs and last-minute urgencies, with a need for adaptive automation.

Automation enables predictive and flexible logistics with solutions such as Skypod (good-to-person), AMR/AGV and Pallet Shuttle, as well as decentralised storage networks. The Renault case study demonstrates how these technologies transform aftermarket spare parts management into a strategic asset, improving accuracy, availability and scalability.

Spare parts logistics: the challenges ahead

When a component fails, every minute counts: there is no room for delays or production stoppages. You need agile, resilient and scalable logistics, ready to respond in real time to unforeseen events and peaks in demand.

Main critical issues:

• High variety of low-turnover SKUs: approximately 60% of items are rarely sold but must always be available. Some items remain on the shelves for months without ever going out of stock.

• Irregular picking volumes: in some sectors, over 60% of items are picked less than once a month, complicating efficient stock management.

• Tight cut-off times: orders often arrive late, but downtime is not permitted.

• Last-minute deliveries and urgent demand management: these require strategic buffering, operational responsiveness and integration with automated picking and dispatching systems.

Flexible and adaptable automation: spare parts can range from small sensors to heavy components weighing over 20 kg. They have different levels of fragility and require different packaging methods. The system must adapt to these differences, ensuring safety and efficiency.

How automation is transforming logistics

Today, logistics can no longer limit itself to reacting: it must anticipate needs. This change of pace is particularly crucial in spare parts logistics and the aftermarket spare parts sector.

Diversifying supplies, decentralising storage and building flexible networks means ensuring continuity and reliability of service, even in volatile and complex contexts.

The solution? Automate the warehouse with tailor-made processes and technologies to optimise space and increase storage density.

At Errevi Automation, we design scalable, customised solutions designed to improve efficiency, precision and operational continuity in all types of warehouses:

• Skypod By Exotec good-to-person systems: for order preparation and consolidation.
• AMR and AGV robots: they manage mixed flows of boxes and pallets and connect the different areas of the warehouse.
• Pallet Shuttle: an efficient and compact storage system designed to optimise space and speed up pallet handling.

Renault Group Case Study

The automotive industry operates in a highly complex environment, characterised by a wide variety of models and innovations such as electric vehicles, which make every operation increasingly challenging. The decline in new car sales has strengthened the strategic role of the aftermarket, which, in addition to promoting customer loyalty, is facing increasingly intense price competition.

In this context, car manufacturers manage between 50,000 and 100,000 SKUs for over 10–20 years, maintaining internal logistics to ensure complete control for the efficient management of orders, deliveries and returns.

Discover how the Renault Group modernised its Villeroy plant. It used Exotec’s Skypod system. This improved the network of aftermarket spare parts warehouses in France.

Conclusions:

Behind every production line is a warehouse that manages up to 500,000 SKUs, from the most common to the rarest, all of which are essential to ensuring smooth production. In this context, efficiency alone is not enough: it is necessary to anticipate problems and react quickly.

Why it pays to invest in automation:

• Up to 80% reduction in errors
• Fewer returns and complaints,
• Immediate availability of parts
• Flexibility and scalability

Errevi Automation: optimise your spare parts logistics

The timely availability of the correct spare part is now a secure and controllable process. With Errevi Automation’s tailor-made solutions, it is possible to automate the warehouse, optimise flows and picking times, significantly increasing operational efficiency.

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