Fulfillment

Fulfillment centers that package and ship goods to retailers and consumers offer a variety of unique challenges in material handling. Orders must be packed efficiently and quickly, and logistics tightly managed to ensure the fulfillment process is modular, flexible and scalable. Even slight changes in efficient picking and packing of bulk retail orders can have a dramatic effect on fulfilment outcomes. Many solutions are available to optimize order fulfillment, such as print and apply, pick-to-light, voice pick and cubing. Data gathering solutions like scanning and weighing can also improve the efficiency of the fulfillment process. 

Case Study: MJ Holdings—Bedford Park, Illinois 

This Chicago area company, a client of Systems In Motion (SIM), distributes trading cards, toys, collectibles and hot trend items to 15,000 retail store locations across the United States and Canada and is the largest distributor of trading cards in North America. Systems in Motion recently analyzed and improved the retail fulfillment process at their 200,000 square foot distribution center.

For the retail fulfillment pick process, SIM recommended an order pick to store, paperless picking process, using pick-to-light, and a cartonization/cubing software to select the correct box size. SIM installed a 3-level pick module with zone routing and early out on level one. We also installed a semi-automated case erector and label applications at multiple start points. These features allowed the facility to target 9000 cartons at a time with an average of 1.8 cartons per order. For the packing and shipping steps of retail fulfillment, SIM developed features like pack list insertion, case seal, ship sortation, weigh, and print & apply. 

These changes resulted in increased slotting and picking efficiency, allowing our client’s fulfillment center to pick an equivalent order volume in only 57% of the time. The improved fulfillment process reduced replenishment time and required labor. The custom layout increased space utilization for reserve storage and was flexible to allow for new carton and pallet flows to be added as needed.