Content |
2025
"Lemana Pro" expands the use of robots in the flagship distribution center. PHOTO
The Lemana Pro company (formerly Leroy Merlin in Russia) demonstrated in mid-December the possibilities of robotization at its Severnaya Zvezda distribution center, which is located in the village of Zaramenye and was commissioned in 2019. A TAdviser correspondent took part in the excursion to the Northern Star. The center is the largest in Russia. In the suburbs, "Lehman Pro" also has a distribution center in Domodedovo, in the industrial park "South Gate." In total, the company has 5 distribution centers, 14 warehouses for working with online orders (darkstors) and 3 sorting centers.
At the end of 2025, the Vanderlande Adapto sorting system was restored in the company's distribution center after a six-month outage. In addition, the RF has formed a fleet of forklift mobile robots (Forklift Mobile Robot - FMR) and put into operation a robotic depalletizer with artificial intelligence. The latter project was implemented jointly with Yandex Robotics, which was engaged in the integration of equipment and the development of software for controlling the rotor.
Actually, the company put into operation the Vanderlande Adapto 3D sorting system back in 2021, but the Dutch manufacturer left Russia. As Yulia Turkina, director of the Severnaya Zvezda radio center, explained to TAdviser, they managed to hire a Russian team of several Vanderlande specialists, due to which the operation of the equipment continued - the technical support of the solution was carried out by their own employees.
The system is engaged in the formation of pallets for stores in an optimal configuration using three-dimensional storage for more than 73 thousand boxes and a conveyor for supplying goods to 16 workstations. Adapto allows you to process up to 200 pallets or 7.4 thousand boxes per hour.
Last year, Lehman Pro commissioned its own Warehouse Management System (WMS), which led to the shutdown of Adapto, since the processes of interaction with Vanderlande equipment had to be reconfigured. As a result, the company spent about six months on improving the integration modules of its WMS and Adapto - in the fall of 2025, the system started working again with the new software manager.
In addition, Lehman Pro, together with Yandex Robotics, managed to integrate with Adapto and the depalletizer roboruk, which at the entrance to the Adapto sorting center automates the disassembly of incoming cargo from pallets. This robot uses a vision system that allows accurate positioning of the nozzle so that the load is securely secured during carrying. The robot control software was developed by Yandex Robotics and integrated with Adapto through interaction with WMS.
Robotization for the company is a way to reduce the shortage of personnel that is present in the industry, as well as reduce injuries and stress on its employees. For this, other automation methods are also used, for example, a pallet sorter and palletomat, which allow employees not to touch wooden pallets.
To move pallets over long distances inside warehouses, Lehman Pro specialists have introduced a system of unmanned FMRs that work completely without human input - on instructions from WMS. In 2025, 10 such unmanned robots are used, but in 2026 the company expects to expand their fleet to 90.
In 2026, the company is going to test the technology of narrow-passage autonomous stackers (Very Narrow Aisle Automated Guided Vehicle - VNA AGV robots). The narrow-passage warehouse format allows you to more efficiently use storage facilities due to the tighter location of the racks. For 2025, the company already has warehouse assistants built under the VNA format, but so far the stackers in them are managed by people.
Lemana Pro is working to increase the level of robotization in the Severnaya Zvezda sorting center to form a set of goods for each store of the chain at once in the warehouse in accordance with its order for the Break-Bulk Cross Docking (BBXD) concept. At the end of 2025, not all operations have yet been fully automated - part of the cargo employees of the sorting center have to collect manually. In the future, the experience of robotization will be extended to other logistics centers of the company.
 | In the coming years, we plan to significantly expand the level of automation of warehouse processes, - explained the current situation Vasily Kuznetsov, director of automation of supply chains at Leman Pro. - First of all, we are talking about the robotization of the BBXD zone - a site that today remains completely manual. Now employees travel long distances, disassembling the goods and laying them out in pallets for different stores. Our goal is to switch to the goods-to-man format, when not a person goes to the product, but a robotic system brings the necessary pallets to the workstations. This will reduce mileage, increase speed and reduce physical stress on staff. |  |
Reducing dependence on cloud providers, Leman Pro is looking for a new data center
As TAdviser discovered in early September 2025, Lehman Pro (formerly Leroy Merlin in Russia) decided to choose a new data center for colocation services. At this stage, the company expects to place 55 racks with IT equipment in the data center according to the colocation model for a period of at least 5 years. Read more here.
"Lemana Pro" is rebuilding IT. Technical Director Nikolai Knysh - about the details in an interview with TAdviser
After separating from its foreign "roots," Leman Pro (formerly Leroy Merlin in Russia) did a lot of work on import substitution of IT systems. Nikolai Knysh, technology director of Lehman Tech, IT company Lehman Pro, spoke about the large-scale reorganization of IT and priority technologies in an interview with TAdviser deputy editor-in-chief Natalya Lavrentieva. Read more here.
2024
Lemana Missile Defense began using robots in its warehouses. PHOTO
In September 2024, the Lehman Missile trading network began using robots in its warehouses as part of a strategic agreement with Yandex. One of the main implementation objects was the Severnaya Zvezda warehouse in Zaramenye, where an artificial intelligence depaletizer robot developed by Yandex Market was launched to automate processes. This is the first such robot used in Russia for retail, which is able to disassemble pallets with boxes of different shapes, sizes and weights and carefully move them to the conveyor. Read more here
Nikolai Knysh, technology director of Leroy Merlin - about the "rake" of digital transformation, which there is a risk of stepping on
Nikolay Knysh, technology director of Leroy Merlin, speaking at TAdviser SummIT on May 28, shared his perspective on drivers and threats to digital transformation.
Transformation in an organization often begins with changes in organizational processes, new role models, and how decisions are made and powers reallocated. In this sense, what is called enterprise gravity is very important. Many enterprises stumble about this, notes Nikolai Knysh. For example, a product team was launched, but it still works in old processes, which sooner or later will drag it into the old mode in which the entire organization worked.
The second important point in transformation is learning. When employees are told that they should do something in a new way, they need to be trained in this. For example, when the team switches to iterative development from waterfall. And a separate story is culture:
| | If you think that there is no culture in your company, in fact, it is, and it is often much stronger than you want to think. Working with culture is an important focus of the company's transformation to match what we want to get. | |
We must not forget about transformation and communications. It is necessary to explain a lot and in detail to the company what exactly is being done, what the target result is, why this or that is changing. For employees, changes are always stressful, and you need to be able to answer the question of why all this is being done.
Speaking about specific cases from practice, the technology director of Leroy Merlin gave an example that people often find themselves gurus in some area. For example, there is a great specialist in the Kanban method, and they want to invite him to their organization, expecting that he will charge everyone with his influence, and the transformation will happen on its own.
| | We tried this: we once brought David Anderson, the man who invented the Kanban method. This is a hype, everyone really liked it: they pasted almost the entire office with stickers, made boards. But as a result, two months later, all these stickers flew around, and people continued to live as they lived. Somewhere in 2-3 places it took root, but at the level of organization of influence it did not have, - said Nikolai Knysh. | |
The takeaway: Understand what you're engaging a guru for, and that it can't be the only way to trigger a transformation. But to maintain attention and communication, this is suitable.
Another story is the coaches. Nikolai Knysh also calls her a "rake" from the experience. There is a hypothesis that the involvement of external coaches will transform teams, and then the entire organization, that coaches, helping to solve daily tasks and challenges, will help teams change. In reality, coaches are strong in training sales, and not in changing processes, in the organization they will not change anything. In addition, there are few truly professional coaches on the market.
Nikolai Knysh calls the third practical case "Selected." It is based on the hypothesis that transformation can only be carried out in part of the organization. Gather thinking, loyal, progressive employees, create privileged conditions for them, better than for the rest of the organization, carry out a transformation there, and then extend it to the whole company. There is a possibility that in part of the company it will not be possible to implement the plan, and the whole idea of transformation will be undermined. But even if in part of the company it was possible to build a "blooming garden," then everyone around will not like it. And then everyone is faced with the problem of how now this "garden" is integrated into a working organization.
A separate question to answer: who is the customer of the transformation? And you need to distinguish between the concepts of initiator, customer and transformation leader. From his experience, Nikolai Knysh believes that the customer of transformation at the level of the entire organization should be the CEO or the board - that is, those who have enough power to change processes and make unpopular decisions. And if this is a transformation at the department level, then the customer should be the head of this department. In other cases, transformations are most often broken.
The factor of "personality in history" is also important. Transformation is a process stretched over time. It happens that some of the company's top managers can change in the process, and the new manager will most often lead to reactionary changes in his field. Therefore, when hiring, it is important to pay attention to the culture and similarity of the candidate's values with what the company is trying to build. CEOs and board colleagues are the insurance and balancing factor to protect transformation.
Summit Photo Gallery
О TAdviser SummIT
TAdviser SummIT, held on May 28, became the largest in the history of its holding: in total, more than 1.5 thousand delegates attended the conference, and more than 50 stands of IT products and services suppliers were deployed in the exhibition area. Nine thematic sessions were held as part of the event - more than last time. About 150 people made reports in the plenary part and thematic sessions. TAdviser SummIT was supported by Ministry of Digital Development. It was attended by the Minister of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media Maksut Shadayev, who in the format of an interview on stage answered sharp questions from participants in the IT industry.
2022: Creation of the IT company "Leroy Merlin Digital Technologies"
In October 2022, Leroy Merlin Digital Technologies was formed, the main activity of which is software development. It creates an IT infrastructure that improves customer experience and makes it seamless. Read more here.
2019: Victor Nastenko, Leroy Merlin: We are building a platform company, and this places huge demands on IT
Viktor Nastenko, Head of the IT Platform Department of the DOMI Directorate, Leroy Merlin, in an interview with TAdviser in March 2019, spoke about the peculiarities of modernizing the company's IT infrastructure and the reasons for choosing hyper-converged systems. Read more here.
IT passport of Leroy Merlin projects
{{# ITProj: Lemana Pro (formerly Leroy Merlin)}}
| The site content is translated by machine translation software powered by PROMT. The machine-translated articles are not always perfect and may contain errors in vocabulary, syntax or grammar. Read original article If you find inaccuracies or errors in the results of machine translation, please write to editor@tadviser.ru. We will make every effort to correct them as soon as possible. |