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100% Made in Germany, 5% more efficient production
trigema, Germany’s largest manufacturer of sport and leisure clothing, has significantly increased its production by converting floor stacking to rack storage. To achieve this, OHRA installed cantilever and pallet racking, providing temporary storage for the fabrics produced by the company’s own knitting machines before they are sent to the finishing department for processing. Metal gratings enable the textiles to be stored in different conditions, regardless of format or storage aids. Thanks to the OHRA racking solutions, trigema has increased production efficiency by 5 per cent.
Buffer storage area between manufacturing and finishing
From the cotton thread to the finished T-shirt, all of trigema's textile production takes place in-house. One step in the production process is “finishing”, this is where the textile is turned into the final product. This requires a number of different processes. The first stage is pre-treatment in ultra-modern washing and bleaching facilities. When the bleaching stage has been completed, the fabric is dyed in the cold-dye plant. Then it is made shrink-proof through mechanical processes.
Floor stacking discovered to be slowing down production
Previously, trigema stored the fabrics in a floor stacking system between the “production” and “finishing” stages. But with increasing utilisation of the warehouse, accessing the individual articles proved to be too time-consuming. In addition, moving the textiles around frequently caused damage to the fabric. The company wanted to store their goods according to the first-in-first-out principle (FIFO), but this could only be implemented at great expense. As higher storage capacities became necessary, trigema took the opportunity to thoroughly optimise the logistics processes in the buffer warehouse.
Greater flexibility thanks to metal grate shelving
The core of the renovation was converting floor stacking to rack storage. As storage locations were necessary for fabrics in a range of types and conditions, trigema decided to equip the warehouse with both pallet racking and cantilever racking from OHRA. In order to ensure production was not disrupted, OHRA installed the racking over the course of a weekend. The pallet racking was equipped with both chipboard shelving and metal grating, and the cantilever racking also had metal grating – this created a continuous storage surface that could accommodate a wide range of storage aids (different pallet formats, boxes or fabrics without storage aids).
More efficiency in the warehouse
In comparison to floor stacking, four racks on the same footprint offer around 60 per cent more storage capacity. Because the shelves enable direct access to each stored item, storage and retrieval processes are on average 50 per cent faster. It is also simple to implement the FIFO principle. Overall, the racks have increased production efficiency by 5 per cent.
About Trigema W. Grupp KG:
Trigema was founded in 1919 by Josef Meyer as “Mechanische Trikotwarenfabriken Gebr. Mayer KG”, based in the Swabian town of Burladingen; since 2024 it has been managed by the fourth generation, Bonita and Wolfgang Grupp Jr. Today, the company is Germany’s largest manufacturer of sport and leisure clothing. The family-owned corporation represents cutting-edge technology, social and economic responsibility and maintaining production in Germany. From the cotton thread to the finished T-shirt, the entire textile production process at trigema takes place in-house with state-of-the-art technology – top quality, made in Germany. All processes have been certified according to STeP by OEKO-TEX®. Every day, around 1,200 employees produce up to 20,000 items of clothing.
