Swiss Warehouse Goes 100-Robot Exotec Upgrade

A Swiss warehouse just swallowed a hundred Exotec Skypods.

Dosenbach-Ochsner, the sportswear and equipment retailer within the Deichmann Group, has turbocharged its Solothurn-based logistics with Exotec’s Skypod system. The Luterbach site now runs a scalable intralogistics network where more than 100 Skypod robots are operational, feeding picking and packing stations as part of a broader push to modernize warehouse operations in Switzerland. The deployment, announced by robotics trade press in February 2026, marks one of the largest Skypod rollouts in Europe and signals a clear preference for high-density, automated storage and retrieval in fast-fashion and consumer goods supply chains.

What makes this rollout notable isn’t just the headcount of robots, but the scale and pace of deployment. Skypod’s core idea—elevated, autonomous shelving that pairs with mobile bots to shuttle goods to highly automated picking lanes—appears to align with Dosenbach-Ochsner’s need to squeeze more throughput from a relatively compact footprint. With the go-live now live for several weeks, the Luterbach operation has begun to demonstrate what a hundred-pod network can do in a real-world, 24/7 fulfillment environment: higher storage density, fewer touchpoints for each item, and the potential for dramatic reductions in walking time for human workers. The project sits at the intersection of demand-driven fulfillment and the push to keep e-commerce and retail replenishment rapid and reliable in a market where Swiss consumers expect near-immediate service.

Industry observers have tracked the move as part of a wider inflection point: warehouse automation is moving from a handful of demo lines to large, scalable installations that can pivot with seasonal demand and product mix. Exotec’s Skypod system claims to deliver high throughput with relatively modular capital expenditure—an important factor for a company like Dosenbach-Ochsner, which is part of a larger retail-and-accessory network and must balance automation with ongoing changes in inventory strategy and store replenishment. In Luterbach, the math isn’t just about robots; it’s about orchestration: the way the fleet, the elevated racks, and the human workforce interact to keep cycle times tight and error rates low.

From a practitioner perspective, the rollout offers several lessons. First, space planning matters just as much as speed. Skypod’s design emphasizes vertical storage to maximize cubic capacity, but that benefit only translates if you map pick paths, packing stations, and cross-docking flows with precision. The Luterbach installation likely required a thorough reconfiguration of floor space and dock lanes to let robots feed into the packing zones efficiently without creating bottlenecks at handoff points. Second, workforce transformation is ongoing—and essential. Robots don’t erase the need for human capability; they shift it. At a site like Luterbach, workers will increasingly handle exception processing, quality checks, and the final staging for outbound shipments, while the Skypods handle the heavy lifting of stock movement and order preparation. Third, reliability hinges on integration. Linking Skypods to warehouse management software, order pools, and downstream packing workflows requires robust IT infrastructure and ongoing monitoring. Expect dedicated technicians, spare-parts pipelines, and remote diagnostics to become standard parts of the operation. Fourth, maintenance and training are non-negotiable. A hundred autonomous units require an escalation plan for software updates, sensor maintenance, and quick-turn repairs to avoid reduced uptime during peak seasons.

The Deichmann-backed Dosenbach-Ochsner deployment carries the implicit promise that large-scale automation can be practical outside the usual tech-tinged business districts of Europe. If the Luterbach site sustains high uptime and consistently meets pick rates with a reduced floor-walking burden on employees, payback economics will begin to look less like vendor marketing and more like a standard line item in the logistics budget. In the meantime, the industry will watch closely as the 100-plus Skypods begin to converge with human teams in a shared workspace, pushing throughput while preserving the flexibility that Swiss retail and logistics demand.

As this deployment continues to mature, two questions will define its next phase: can the system sustain peak-season surge without sacrificing accuracy, and how quickly will operators translate the early gains into longer-term cost reductions and inventory turns? If the early indicators hold, the Luterbach installation could become a compelling blueprint for other European warehouses seeking rapid scalability without a multi-year, multi-million-dollar enterprise-automation project.

Sources

Dosenbach-Ochsner installs more than 100 Exotec Skypod robots to modernize Swiss warehouse