Technology in the Warehouse

With A Little Help From Above

For any warehouse, either installing a new warehouse automation system or moving into a new facility would pose a challenge of Biblical proportions. Imagine doing both concurrently.

That task confronted the warehouse at Bob Jones University, Greenville, SC, in 1995. Besides providing on-campus education, the university publishes textbooks and other educational material for distribution to Christian schools throughout the country. The school found itself outgrowing its 15,000 sq. ft. warehouse, which held approximately 4,000 SKUs, and relying on outbound warehouses to hold ever-larger amounts of inventory. At the same, time, the minimal level of automation at the warehouse restricted operations to paper-based picking procedures. One- to two- week lags between receiving an order and shipping it to the customer were common.

�Their main goal was to get as much product through their warehouse as possible,� says Scott Milliken, systems consultant with Compsee, Inc., Mt. Gilead, NC, �with the least amount of distraction to the people who were doing the picking and packing.�

Distraction, unfortunately, surrounded the university as the relocation to a new warehouse became inevitable. �We didn�t want to do both simultaneously,� admits Marvin Reem, programming manager at the university. �The new warehouse coincided with the new system by accident.�

Though he confesses that the first six months after the project began were �pretty painful,� Reem says the move and installation proceeded smoothly due largely to Compsee, which served as both consultant and hardware vendor. Compsee supplied the university with its own scanner wedges, and installed an RF system from Norand, as well as Datamax bar-code printers.

In the old facility, picking tickets provided little guidance for order fillers, who would have to search for specific product locations. Now, pickers rely totally on 28 RF terminals to tell them what to pick, where you find it, and into what barcoded order carton to place it. Once filled, the boxes move atop a power conveyor to packing stations where operators again scan the boxes. If a customer requires a packing list, one is automatically produced. Cartons placed on a central conveyor pass over a weigh-in-motion scale and fixed-mount scanner, triggering manifest generation. Shipping labels are printed and applied, as the carton continues to the dock.

Reem says the new system has drastically improved customer service, due to fewer errors and tighter control of inventory and order fulfillment. From a savings standpoint, he says the benefits couldn�t be more heavenly. �We have gone from being able to ship 1,600 boxes each day under the manual system,� attests Reem, �to between 3,000 and 3,500 boxes each day. And we�re able to do it all in one shift, rather than operating 24 hours a day.� Same-day shipment of orders is not unheard of, he adds.

Ever conscious of doing unto others, the university didn�t leverage the new system to reduce its staff. �During our peak season, the level of permanent employees that we retain hasn�t changed significantly,� Reem says. �But we�ve eliminated overtime and we rely less heavily on temporary help,� thus keeping labor costs under control. The requirement for physically handling inventory has also been reduced substantially.

Milliken adds that the addition of an RF access point has enabled the warehouse to increase traffic on the network. �After the upgrade, they were able to process more shipments in the same time,� he says. �The pay-off for the overall system is that they have a lot fewer errors and more efficient picking.�

Realizing that only the Almighty is perfect, Reem rates his facility a �9� on a scale of one to ten. �I�d done a number of automation projects before coming to Bob Jones University,� he explains. �This was by far the most elaborate and it worked out extremely well.�