Tissot masters logistics with its Rubik's cube

Let’s begin with the building in numbers: 7,500 cubic metres; five robots to facilitate the storage of more than twelve million watches and components. The building contains a total of 32,000 compartments, some of which are accessible at a speed of five metres per second.

Automated storage at Tissot

This nerve centre, designed to create synergies between all production stages of a watch, contributes its share of logistical efficiency. Special software was implemented to immediately track down articles stored inside the Cube or on the 540-metre conveyor-belt that carries all the items. This ensures that cost and quality of components are controlled at all times.

The process starts with the arrival of goods at Le Locle, where watches and components are unpacked and registered with the system. Next, the sales department places an order from its location in Tissot's headquarters. A combination of software and robots shows how the box containing the watches is being prepared in the Cube and placed in the pick-up area for a driver to collect it. Of course, there is an intermediate stop for quality control.

So once again, ever since the brand was founded in 1853, Tissot is showing with this building that it takes its slogan “Innovators by tradition” seriously.

From the Swiss mountains to the world's markets

Have you ever considered the carbon footprint of a watch? How much energy is consumed at every stage of a watch's production for a timepiece manufactured by our firms? Production is often in the mountains, and the watches have to be shipped all over the world. The higher the volume of watches, the more problematic their storage and preparation before being dispatched. In other trade sectors only an office might be needed to carry out this activity. For watch brands like Tissot, it can become a huge enterprise.

One in which history and the watchmaker’s culture exist cheek-by-jowl with high tech and automation. This is not just any building, but a cube, a bunker filled with technology that reflects the brand's confidence in its future.

Doubling production, producing and delivering 5-6 million watches some day? The idea may have left many sceptical when a press release was sent around about this building back in November 2011. However, anything seems possible since the announcement at Baselworld of the now famous Sistem51 to celebrate Swatch's 30^th anniversary. Indeed, the new Sistem51 enables industrial production of reliable mechanical calibres with less need for human intervention. In this context, the inauguration of this ultra-modern logistics centre makes perfect sense.