Career
VANDERLANDE
WRITTEN BY SANDOR HABETS
Vanderlande is the global market leader for future-proof logistic process automation which almost every Mechanical Engineering student would know from their large role in airport logistics. This is, of course, an important part of Vanderlande, but not every student tends to be aware of all of their activities and what this company has to offer. Therefore, I was glad to get the opportunity to interview Joep Michels about his experiences within Vanderlande.
Vanderlande Vanderlande started as a family business in the Dutch town of Veghel active in the refurbishing and production of machines for the textile industry. Nowadays, it is present in each of the world’s expanding markets. It has continued to grow and is now a reliable partner for future proof logistic process automation. The activities of Vanderlande can be subdivided into three branches: airports, parcels and warehousing. • Airports: You might be familiar with the conveyer belts of Vanderlande, but this company can actually be responsible for the entire passenger experience at an airport, from bag drop and passenger security checks to the storage, sortation, flight make-up and the eventual baggage reclaim. Their systems are active in around 600 airports across the
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globe. A challenge that this company is currently working on is the use of automated vehicles for baggage transportation. Warehousing: This is an enormously growing market. Warehousing deals with very complex logistics that require high-quality algorithms. Ideally, the entire warehouse should be fully automatized and this requires a lot of flexibility in handling the levels of orders. All variables need to be taken into account, from how many orders can be stored in a trolley or truck, to the ductility, shape and layout of a single product. Parcels: Especially at this time, the parcel industry is extremely important with increasingly more demands from its customers. This means that meeting service level demands are becoming increasingly tough. Every day, the systems of Vanderlande sort more than 48 million parcels.
