Swiss Warehouse Goes Skypod: 100 Robots Deployed

Dosenbach-Ochsner just wired its Solothurn warehouse for speed.

The Swiss sportswear and equipment company, part of the Deichmann Group, has deployed Exotec’s Skypod system at its Luterbach site in the canton of Solothurn. The go-live has put more than 100 Skypod autonomous storage-and-picking pods into operation, feeding picking and packing stations as part of a broader push to modernize intralogistics in a high-velocity distribution environment.

Skypod’s appeal is squarely in footprint and scalability. The arrangement at Luterbach leverages the vertical storage towers and a fleet of mobile robots to create high-density storage with a markedly smaller floor footprint than conventional racking. In practice, that translates into more SKUs stored in the same square meters and shorter travel paths between storage and ingest/fulfillment points. For a consumer-brand supply chain with sporadic peak demand, the impact is measured not just in space saved but in the potential for more predictable cycle times at peak hours, fewer manual handoffs, and closer alignment to a just-in-time picking cadence.

From an operations perspective, the deployment underscores a trend in European warehouses toward large-scale robotic fleets that are designed to scale with demand. Exotec’s approach—reliably delivering hundreds of pods that can be re-allocated or expanded as volumes shift—addresses the perennial problem of one-off pilot projects that never translate into deployable capacity. The Dosenbach-Ochsner project demonstrates that a scalable architecture can move from pilot to production without forcing a wholesale rewrite of the warehouse’s workflows.

Integration work, however, remains a pivotal and often underappreciated phase. Industry observers note that the effectiveness of Skypod systems hinges on a clean handoff to the warehouse management system and ERP layer, plus the ability to stage pick paths that fit existing replenishment patterns. Floor space planning, ceiling height clearance for tower stacks, robust electrical service, and a reliable network backbone are not cosmetic extras; they are prerequisites for sustained throughput gains. And on the human side, operators still need training to manage exception handling, quality checks, and returns processing—areas where automation meets the realities of imperfect real-world items and unpredictable demand.

The cost picture—the oft-sold “no-brainer” of automation—comes with caveats that vendors seldom advertise up front. Hidden costs tend to surface in software maintenance and periodic upgrades, long-run spare parts, and downtime required for system switchover or re-optimizations after major SKU changes. Integration with existing workflows, safety interlocks, and task-level handoffs (from robot to human) can also require a notepad-full of change-management activity that isn’t always visible in vendor press materials.

Beyond the numbers, the Luterbach install matters for Swiss and European logics: a major, scalable robotic backbone in a mid-sized logistics hub suggests a pragmatic path toward volume-driven automation where labor costs and demand volatility converge. If the system delivers on its promise of higher density and smoother throughput, it could become a blueprint for similar facilities juggling seasonal spikes and a diverse product mix.

In the near term, expectations will hinge on measurable throughput and how well the integration sustains cycle-time improvements during peak periods. ROI, as with most large-scale intralogistics programs, will be driven by labor reallocation—what workers do instead of repetitive picking tasks—and by the vendor’s ability to keep the fleet healthy with predictable maintenance and software updates.

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