Major Wine & Spirit Distributor Automates Distribution Process

July 11, 2012 - PRLog -- Facing growing order fulfillment and maintenance problems with a 35 year old paper-based, manual console-merge system; this major Wine & Spirits distributor knew they needed to invest in a new system that would allow them to be competitive and get solidly to the next level.  “Our entire system was simply antiquated”, said Chairman for this company, “we were struggling to keep up with the volume demands and service levels that were being dictated by our customers.  We chose to partner with W&H Systems to design, build and integrate a new fully automated system” he continued.  “With their extensive industry experience they provided numerous effective design solutions incorporating the latest material handling technologies.
Project Challenges
The 500,000 square foot Brooklyn facility consists of five contiguous buildings which have multiple floor elevations and roof lines.  System installation required substantial building rework including the building of a new shipping dock and the installation of a concrete mezzanine on a warehouse floor that was built on pile caps.  
“To complicate matters”, said Director of Corporate Operations for this major supplier, “we needed to keep existing operations going while the new material handling systems were installed.  W&H did a great job ensuring that we were able to operate our business during our busy season.  We were also able to extensively test the new system prior to going live”.  There were virtually two complete systems in operation until the cutover.  Once the new system was fully commissioned, the 35 year old system was removed and scrapped.
Operation
The Warehouse Control Systems (WCS) Visit: http://www.whsystems.com/index.php/products/warehouse-con...

receives the daily shipping requirements sent from the host computer and creates the waves for processing.  Once created, picking labels are printed by picking area.  There are sixteen separate pick modules (eleven full case lines picking from pallets for the faster moving items, two full case lines from flow rack for medium moving items, one oddball line for the slowest moving items and two split case lines for bottles).  The operators in the full case pick modules pick the cases from either pallets or from flow rack onto the conveyor line and place bar code labels on the top of the cases.  Once on the pick conveyor, the labels are scanned for verification before leaving the module.  This scanner also stops multi-reads, no-reads and “out of wave” cases in the pick modules before they become an issue elsewhere in the system.  
Operators in the split case module (a.k.a. the Bottleroom) pick bottles based instructions provided by voice technology generated by Wave Control System.  At the discharge of the Bottleroom, the order is checked and a barcode label is placed on the side of the case and released into the system.  The cases then get automatically shrink wrapped in order to keep the bottles secure in transit to the customer.  An empty carton monorail travels through the Bottleroom and is equipped with an automatic trash blow off device which automatically feeds an outside trash compactor; re-usable empty cartons are circulated on the monorail for reuse.
Almost five miles of conveyor systems are used throughout the material handling systems to learn more, visit http://www.whsystems.com/index.php/services/conveyor-and-...
with most of it being accumulation conveyor.  The accumulation conveyor provides a great amount of buffer for optimal operations.  As the cases leave the picking area they are conveyed to either one of three pre-merges.  Photo-eye sensor accumulators are utilized in all of the key merge areas to allow for maximum release efficiency, speed and gap control.  
After the sixteen pick lines have been pre-merged onto three conveyor lines, the cases are transported and accumulated to a final combiner merge where the three lines are merged with any recirculated cases.  The final combiner merge creates a single stream of cases ideally gapped and ready for sortation to their assigned loading door.
Prior to the sortation system, the cases pass through a seven-head scan tunnel that reads the barcodes, identifies the cases and directs them to their lane assignment.  The multiple scan heads of the scan tunnel substantially improves the read rates, and although there are few, it also rejects the cases that have mis-applied labels by checking the applied picking label against the manufacturer’s barcode.  A vision capture system immediately follows the scan tunnel and provides additional verification and security by photographing each carton and comparing it against all the database of images of the specific sku.
A high speed FKI Unisort XV shoe sorter is utilized to gently direct the cases into their appropriate aftersort lane for transport to the loading doors.  The shipping sorter consists of thirteen diverts (12 direct to loading doors and one jackpot lane for processing of no reads, mis-applied labels or cases directed by the WCS for manual processing).   The jackpot line has also been expanded to supply a second sorter prior to going to the dock.   The second sorter feeds two additional loading doors for a total of 14 and has the capacity to feed additional doors in the future.
At the end of each aftersort lane, the cases are automatically scanned (on multiple sides) prior to loading into the delivery trucks for final verification and security.  Telescoping extendible loaders are utilized that reach into the trucks to facilitate loading.  Two doors have been designed to accommodate large trailers and have traversing extendible loaders for additional flexibility in certain loading and delivery scenarios.
Multiple waves are on the conveyor system at any given time throughout the night shift and they are simply processed sequentially and fluidly.  This seamless label based automated wave picking process allows for great system productivity.
A panel view podium is utilized to provide control for overall system maintenance while two strategically located large monitoring screens show operators clear graphical and numerical snapshots of the system status and performance.
The Results
The combiner and sorter can see rates of 10,000 cases per hour during peak demand.  This is many times greater than the rate of the old manual system which enables Empire Merchants to be more responsive to their customers’ needs.  The additional capacity also allows for future growth potential.
With the addition of many more forward pick positions the increased SKU representation accounts for 96% of the average daily volume, greatly minimizing the picks from the “outside” areas, which could potentially delay production.  
The new system is far more gentle on the product as well as wide enough to handle the large gift box cases.  Both system breakage and non-conveyable cases have virtually been eliminated.  These improvements in conjunction with the improved accuracy due to latest controls technologies have made the order integrity excellent.