Case Studies – FA

• This customer planned to expand production due to increased order volumes.
• A new DC was planned and they expected to increase productivity with real time communications with WMS.
• Inhouse IT staff less to oversee the project.

Our system improved customer’s productivity by 35%

• Orders per day increased by 300%.
• Productivity increased by 35% over the old facility paper picking.

• Operators used hand held terminals to scan the barcodes of each product, one by one. This meant that 40,000 products had to be scanned 40,000 times along with the store codes, so shipping was limited to 40,000 to 50,000 items per day.
• About 17 to 18 company employees worked a total of 1,300 hours of overtime in six months.
• Larger items were difficult to handle because operators used one hand to operate their hand held terminals.

Our system improved work efficiency by 136%

• The company was able to cut overtime by half. Further creative improvements could also reduce overtime even more!
• The operation is so simple that even new employees can do it easily.
• Operators can use both hands to sort and place shoes, bags, and other big items; they no longer have the stress of needing to manipulate large products with one hand.

• Operators had to choose between various sizes of cardboard boxes for shipping.
• Sukeno wanted to automatically deliver the required numbers of the required types of boxes for each recipient.
• Picking was performed in order of store numbers, so the company was unable to adjust the number of workers by volume.

Volume calculation eliminated the need to add labels and repack boxes after picking

• Informing operators of the results of volume calculations facilitated the supply of right boxes.
• Automatically delivering the required number of boxes for each recipient eliminated the need to add labels and repack later due to changes in number of boxes.
• Under the new system, stores having high volumes are finished first, and then picking is done in order of store numbers. This allowed reducing the number of operators.

• This company uses conveyors and offers small quantities of a diverse array of products, thereby needing to perform picking efficiently.
• The company sought to increase picking speeds to match conveyor speeds.
• The company uses a pick by list system using conveyors, requiring error-proofing from omissions and misreading

No more backup on conveyors

• Narrowing the range of tasks per operator by assigning one operator to each block increased picking speed to that of the conveyors, eliminating conveyor backup.
• Transitioning to a block relay system eliminated omissions, and error-proofing buzzers drastically reduced errors.

• With its offering of small quantities of a diverse array of products, this company was unable to improve work efficiency.
• The company receives a high volume of products with different packaging (in cases, in pieces, etc.); product management required lot of effort.
• The company needed new hires to compensate for the lack of experienced operators.

Pairing with conveyors enabled control of collapsible containers

• The automatic diversion of collapsible containers to blocks to be picked, dramatically decreased operators’ confirmation work.
• The picking is guided by light modules, so even new operators can perform the work with ease.
• Our system clarified inventory control.
• Our system made it possible to spread work time evenly, reducing wasted work time.

• Shinnippon Calendar wanted to create a labour-saving system to counter the growing difficulty of securing enough operators.
• The company was already using a simple put to light system for assorting, but wanted to improve productivity as well as assorting accuracy.
• The company wanted to reduce walking distances to reduce the burden on operators.

• Pairing the Pick to Light System with piece sorters allows piece sorters to assort flyers as well as the products.
• This dramatically improved assorting accuracy over the conventional manual labour.
• Now anyone can perform assorting with only basic training.