Werner Zehnder, Head of Logistics at Kräuter Mix’s Wiesentheid location, celebrates 40 years
An impressive 60,000 square meters of warehouse space across Abtswind and Wiesentheid, enough room for a good 85,000 pallets and state-of-the-art warehouse technology with an integrated ERP system: a lot has changed in the 40 years Werner Zehnder has been working in warehousing and logistics at Kräuter Mix – and definitely for the better!
“Machinery and automation have drastically eased the physical strain on the team,” underscores Zehnder. This is admittedly a far cry from the days when the logistics specialist joined the company some 40 years ago on November 26, 1985. “On my first day in the warehouse, we still had to head out to the railroad tracks in Wiesentheid and load the sacks of leeks from the train cars to our trucks by hand!” recalls the current head of logistics for the Wiesentheid location.
Werner Zehnder knows every inch of the logistics center in Wiesentheid with all its many halls.
History at work
Just a few months after starting at Kräuter Mix, Zehnder, who had originally trained as a baker, retrained as a machine operator on the belt dryer over in Production and spent several years moving between Production and Warehousing. “Back then, we still did our own drying in-house. Even to this day, I still associate working on the belt dryer with history being made: that’s where I was when I heard the unexpected news on November 9, 1989, that the inner German border had been opened. I couldn’t believe my ears!”
Looking back, Werner Zehnder also can’t quite believe just how quickly warehousing and logistics expanded here at Kräuter Mix back in the 1990s. First, the original office wing and hall in Abtswind were quickly upscaled to include two extra halls. Next followed one of the most extensive projects in the company’s history up until that point. In 1997, construction started on the new logistics center in Abtswind. “That was a huge milestone for the company,” says Zehnder who, as a former warehouse shift supervisor, was right at the heart of the action. “This meant all the external warehouses, which had been dotted throughout the local area, were brought together in one central location. Not to mention the automatic mobile racks which optimized supply to the production lines and the use of the new warehouse space.”
As well as Kräuter Mix’s warehouses in Wiesentheid, Werner Zehnder is also responsible for protective inventory treatments, order picking and administrative jobs like warehouse accounting and staff planning
“Plenty of action” at the Wiesentheid logistics center
With business booming, hall after hall quickly filled up – and faster than expected! – and so just a few years later, Kräuter Mix was again on the look out for new space, which they happily found in nearby Wiesentheid. In 2005, work began on converting a former production hall into a warehouse, which gradually grew into a large logistics complex as additional halls were added in the years that followed. Since then, Werner Zehnder has been working as head of logistics in Wiesentheid, where there has been “plenty of action”, in his words. After all, this expansion was followed by the installation of protective inventory treatment systems, the expansion of the juniper zone with juniper drying in Wiesentheid and the introduction of a driverless transport system in most of the Wiesentheid warehouses, not to mention the ongoing trialing of a new ERP system. No, Zehnder has certainly never had any reason to complain of a lack of “action”!
Even after all these years and plenty of admin to get through, Zehnder still places huge value on completing two or three rounds every day. “That adds up to a good 11,000 steps in a working day,” he adds with a smile. When asked how long he plans to keep up his rounds, he replies contentedly: “The company has always been there for me, and so as long as I’m needed, I’ll be here!”
