Edeka is staying with SSI Schäfer’s WAMAS as the principal warehouse-management system at many of its non-fully-automated full-range distribution centers, rather than rolling Infios’s K.Motion more widely after two pilots.
According to Retail Optimiser, the group had been preparing to replace SSI Schäfer as its main WMS supplier, but the pilots did not deliver enough benefit to cover the cost and risk of a group-wide change. The same report estimates that more than 50 Edeka logistics sites run WAMAS, especially full-range centers where store load carriers are still packed by hand.
A WMS sits in receiving, storage, replenishment, picking, waves, labor and the order in which store shipments are built. Grocery operations keep running while any cutover is attempted, so a replacement has to outperform an incumbent that already runs a live food network.
The group’s estate is federated across regional organizations and mixed automation. Retail Optimiser reports that fully automated full-range centers use Witron, while WAMAS remains prominent in less automated facilities, with other suppliers at specialized sites. That mix makes a single warehouse-platform mandate hard to impose: older regional buildings and new high-throughput sites can share case, pallet and store-order objects while executing them differently.
Continuity in WMS is not a freeze. The group is reportedly pursuing a development partnership with SSI Schäfer so Edeka requirements can shape later WAMAS versions, including a possible slimmer, grocery-specific variant. SSI Schäfer may also get a further opening in robotics-based automatic order picking as a second automation supplier beside Witron—an adjacent choice that still depends on warehouse software, order systems and fallback processes when automation stops.
Running two automation ecosystems can limit lock-in, but it also means dual interfaces, spare parts, ramp-up skills and recovery paths. The K.Motion pilots show a migration can fail commercially without the software being a poor product: training, cutover risk, integration and operational knowledge around the incumbent still have to be beaten.
Grocery networks often add robotics in selected buildings and grow automated sites while leaving core software in place when replacement would disrupt more than it would improve. For Edeka, that currently means WAMAS continuity with room for new automation around it, while store orders still have to leave the dock the next morning.