Pallet Buffer Zone System Keeps FILA Orderpicking Up and Running

"The need to fill orders that total over 800,000 pairs of athletic footwear each month dictates complete and accurately stocked orderpicking zones; zones without temporary out-of-stock 'holes,'" says Sandy Morales, warehouse manager for FILA U.S.A. "That's why we opted for our 2000 pallet load buffer system which assures that every available style, color and size is at the order picker's fingertips. The bottom line: more rapid order fulfillment with no missed items and no incomplete orders."

The system used by the Baltimore-based company was designed and manufactured by INTERROLL Corporation, Wilmington, N.C. "The space-saving pushback buffer, erected against the perimeter walls, practically encircles the 266-slot order-picking system," says Morales. "Personnel are now confident that stock will be there when they need it."


Fitness: The Order of the Day
The fitness craze in the U.S. has created an extraordinary market for "specialized and stylized" athletic footwear that matches the shoe to the sporting activity. The market is estimated at $6.3 billion per year. "Our annual 20 percent sales increase provides evidence that the boom is continuing," says Morales. "As the '90s approached, we streamlined distribution and warehouse operations to keep pace." FILA warehouses and distributes over 250 shoe styles in the 13 most common sizes, as well as infant's and men's extra-large sizes. The company has several outlet stores, but the majority of orders come from retail stores throughout the country.


System in Action
Orders can vary from individual pairs to truckloads being delivered to high volume distribution centers around the country. A computer system automatically receives and generates a special pick ticket and a bar-coded label that have all of the order information encoded for order picking. Typical order information includes: pick-zone location, gender, style, trim color, quantity and size — all grouped according to the type of carrier that will transport the shipment.

The company worked with Conveyor Handling Co. Inc., Jessup, Md., to develop an order-picking system. Conveyors that run up and down the center aisle of both levels of the order picking area carry empty boxes that will be filled according to the pick ticket. The two-tier system has 266, four-pallet deep pick slots. The order picking area, divided in picking zones, may have up to six people working each zone, pulling shoes to fill the orders. When a pallet is emptied, the order picker removes it, allowing other pallets in the slot to roll forward into position.

Forklift operators, traveling the aisle between the buffer storage system and the order picking mezzanine, constantly refill pick slots with full pallet loads. The push-back buffer maximizes storage capacity while offering the highest number of pallet pick faces to the forklift operators.

"We feel we have a cost-effective solution with the combination of the order picking conveyor and buffer storage," says Morales. "Since implementing the new system we have more than tripled our daily order throughput from 1,000 to 3,000 orders per day."

Salon Products Maker Prevents Product Diversion with WMS

Matrix Essentials, headquartered in Solon, Ohio, a division of Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., recently installed a warehouse management system coupled with a radio frequency/data collection (RF/DC) inventory tracking network to achieve four primary goals: manage a product mix of 1,300 stockkeeping units (SKUs), curb diversion of products from its exclusive salon outlets to retail stores, keep pace with increasing demand for its products, and accommodate expanding and new product lines of hair care and personal care products.

Matrix Essentials is a manufacturer of professional hair and skin care products distributed nationally through professional salons. Its brands include Vavoom, Matrix Essentials, Biolage and Vital Nutrients. Matrix is the professional division to sister company Clairol, the retail hair and personal care product division of Bristol-Myers Squibb.

"The salon industry is recognized as traditionally slow to automate, and we felt strongly that integrating our manufacturing, warehousing and distribution processes and installing an automated warehouse management system would give us a competitive advantage in the marketplace, and help us serve our distributors even better," says Bart Jones, director of engineering for Matrix Essentials.

Matrix' 200,000-square-foot distribution center in Solon was built to effectively manage product volumes which have doubled in the past five years, and are expected to grow even more because of the new Vital Nutrients product line. The Matrix distribution center is part of a 600,000-square-foot, multi-facility corporate campus which includes four warehouses and three manufacturing and office buildings.

Robocom Systems' RIMS advanced warehouse management system coordinates such functions as inventory control, warehousing and product shipment at the Matrix facility. Robocom's automated system, customized for Matrix, supports inventory and distribution operations in a high-tech warehouse environment, with RF/DC hand-held and fixed position scanners, conveyors and sortation systems.

The previously-used order processing system at Matrix Essentials required internal teams to make manual inventory counts and keep hand-written records. The system was labor intensive and involved time-consuming manual checks at production, distribution and at the distributor.


Implementation
Phase One of the Matrix DC project started by linking QAD's MFG/PRO enterprise resource planning system with Bradley Ward's Manufacturing Control System. MFG/PRO is designed to streamline the manufacturing process and control accounts payable, inventory and purchasing.

Phase Two of the project began with construction of the 200,000-square-foot distribution center in 1991, incorporating a Rapistan-Demag automated storage/retrieval system (AS/RS) and conveyor system to sort batch-picked product. The AS/RS is a three-aisle, 18,000 opening system, 12 levels high, occupying roughly 25 percent of the distribution center's 200,000 square feet of space. The AS/RS uses a combination of both near and far bins in each of the three aisles, which allows for a more dense storage system. As product from the far bins is needed for orders or rewarehousing, the cranes "shuffle" the pallet in the near bin to another location.

Phase Three included implementation of Robocom Systems' RIMS v3.2 warehouse management system. Robocom was selected as a supplier because, among other reasons, it had past experience with QAD's MFG/PRO and had developed an interface solution which links its warehouse management system with QAD's enterprise software.

RIMS runs on a Hewlett Packard 9000 Series H70 and coordinates most receiving, store, pick and ship functions. The system performs normal putaway and replenishment functions based on a "rules-based" logic system. Part of its function is to provide an inventory database for Matrix's AS/RS, but actual control of the storage/retrieval process is dedicated to two 486 PCs.

Matrix chose a 900 MHz spread spectrum, frequency-hopping system to capture inventory data and transmit storage/pick instructions. Seventeen LXE 2280 tethered scanners, one LXE 6220 controller, 20 LXE 2285 hand-held units with a built-in scanner, and 17 Spectra Physics Model SP400 standard range scanners are used for collecting receipt, putaway, order pick and shipment data. Its terminals are largely interchangeable in this application, with use dependent on personal preference of the operator.


Diversion Control
Diversion of Matrix Essentials products from its exclusive outlets is a primary concern for Matrix marketing personnel and has had a major impact on its distribution process. According to Matrix Essentials, diversion — when products meant for a salon are diverted to the mass market — is a major problem in the salon sales industry.

The methods used to combat this problem impact Matrix' distribution system primarily because of the density of data on its ship labels. "We specifically designed our bar code to track any diverted product back through the sales chain to its original point of shipment," says Puthoff.

The Bradley-Ward manufacturing control system (MCS) is designed to provide automated data collection throughout the manufacturing process and to apply bar code labels for use at the distribution center and for diversion control. The host system, MFG/PRO, provides all pallet and case specifications for each work order downloaded to the MCS. This information, in turn, is used to produce labels on Matrix Essentials' bar code printers. "We couldn't do what we do here without the MCS system doing the labeling," says Puthoff.

When Matrix Essentials sales representatives tour possible outlets and buy back "diverted" product, packages can be identified as having been sold to a non-authorized outlet by a particular distributor. The distributor subsequently must buy back the product at full retail price. The LXE 2330 unit has the capability of accepting personal signatures as verification of the process.


Inventory Control
The two-deep arrangement of Matrix' AS/RS gives the manufacturer greater storage density to handle its inventory, although with some sacrifice in throughput. The distribution center's skin, supported by the rack system, was designed for future expansion.

Product is scanned into inventory when received and a putaway task is assigned to the load for AS/RS storage. Delivery to storage is by lift truck. An AccuSort scanner on the storage machine scans the pallet, confirming putaway. When product is needed in the pick lanes, an order is released to the AS/RS and pallet loads of case-packaged product are retrieved and delivered to the proper location.


"Wave" Picking
Robocom's RIMS system provides wave picking functionality for efficient picking and shipping. The Matrix Essentials "Wave Planner" uses RIMS to build up routes (or truck loads) from downloaded customer orders and then build up waves from these routes. A wave may contain up to six truck loads, averaging 4,000 cases in total.

These waves are then activated to begin the process of case picking from the pick to belt area and pallet picking from the AS/RS. When a case picker is sent to a location along the conveyor, RIMS enables him to pick the number of cases necessary to fulfill the demand for the entire wave. This allows employees to consolidate what would have been six trips around the pick area into one.

A RIMS-linked controller that gives Matrix more accurate process control, based on inventory and ship schedules, directs sortation. Its batch-pick/sort system allows waves of six distributor orders to be picked simultaneously and sorted using an AccuSort Omni-X fixed-position scanner.

Using the sortation system, RIMS diverts each case (recording which individual case — by case serial number — went to which customer) to the proper pallet building position at the end of the conveyor system. Cases are sorted onto six conveyor lines, each dedicated to a distributor order. Cases are then palletized, shrink wrapped and ready for shipment.

Resulting improvements in order processing and inventory control provided Matrix with the database and control systems required to track product not only in its distribution center, but also in the field as part of its efforts to curb product diversion.

"We also developed and put in place in-house initiatives which resulted in more than 40 standard operating procedures," says David Zavodny, manager of distribution. "As our employees gained hands-on familiarity and a comfort level with the system, learning to create waves, etc., our order turnaround moved from 24 hours to far less. When we first started, the time between waves was sometimes an hour and a half. Now it is between 10 to 15 minutes, and shipping takes place "as quickly as the orders can be processed and the financials approved."

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