Distribution

Distributors must contend with receiving, storing, and sorting a large range of products and shipping them to retail clients and other businesses. The high volume of distribution represents major challenges for material handling such as large inventory, rapid flow of goods, and complex orders. Coordination and efficiency are critical for this type of material handling. Goods to person technologies like Opex Perfect Pick can automate labor-intensive parts of the fulfillment process by reducing time and labor demands and improving the throughput and accuracy of distribution. Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) and transportation management systems provide information and opportunities for greater coordination and

 also improve the order fulfillment process. 

Case Study: KeHE Distributors—Dallas, Texas 

KeHE Distributors is one of the largest pure-play grocery distributors in North America, serving retail grocery locations across the US and Canada and specializing in fresh and organic products. Systems in Motion and our subsidiary Conveyor Solutions worked with KeHE to install 4 aisles of OPEX Perfect Pick machines at their Dallas distribution center. 

The Perfect Pick system helps automate the picking process by giving iBOT robots complete access to the aisle’s inventory. Items are placed into totes and delivered to workstations where operators pick, put away, or count them. These automated Cortex workstations receive fulfillment containers and convey them through a scan-tunnel to identify the container. Cortex determines which orderliness exists for that container LPN and directs the container to a pick-to-light location where an operator fulfills the order line. When all operations for that container are complete, the container is routed out of the workstation and transferred back into the warehouse. 

This goods to person system increased the efficiency of KeHE’s distribution center, decreased labor content, vastly improved quality control and enhanced operator ergonomics. The dynamic Perfect Pick system is also flexible and system capabilities can be changed by adding modules, a backend presentation station, or iBOTs to match changing inventory and throughput requirements.