In April, a group of students of the course “Digital Commerce in B2C and B2B Markets” got the opportunity to visit several headquarters and distribution centres in Switzerland to profound insights into logistics and the digital commerce activities of the companies. The group was lead by Prof. Dirk Morschett.
The day started at Microspot where Daniel Augustin, Head of Marketing, gave an excellent presentation of the company and the digital marketing along the marketing funnel. Christian Rohr, Head of HR, then gave the students a perspective on Microspot’s trainee programme. As the final highlight of the visit, Georg Weinhofer, Head of Logistics and Service, and a colleague gave a detailed tour through the ultra-modern warehouse, showing the flow of goods from the goods receiving area via the storage area with its stingray shuttle system to the picking stations and the packaging. In the control room, it became apparent that logistics is a high-tech business.
The day continued at Jumbo in Bülach, where Lorenz Würgler, Head of E-Commerce, and his colleagues guided the group through their e-logistics centre. The particularities of the bulky, heavy and highly diverse goods quickly became clear and the people-to-goods picking with individual and manual packaging made sense. After the tour, Lorenz gave a great presentation of E-Commerce of Jumbo in the context of the merger of Coop Bau+Hobby and Jumbo last year.
To get a further perspective on Digital Commerce, the group drove to coop.ch’s headquarters in Spreitenbach. Grocery online is a totally different business and Philippe Huwyler, CEO of coop.ch, and Rolf Zeller, Head of Projects, explained this in detail to the students. Seeing is understanding, so the group took a long tour of the grocery distribution centre where they again followed the flow of goods from the goods receiving area through the different picking areas via the freezer with -28 °C to the outbound dock where the various boxes for one customer are assembled just in time before the Coop-own delivery van leaves.
With the visit to three companies and very open explanations by the companies, it was a day full of dense learning and profound insights into Digital Commerce.
