THE STATE OF

Materials Handling Automation/Retail

A comprehensive look at the innovative

systems that are changing the face of retail
warehouse and DC operations.
 The State of Materials Handling welcome
Automation/Retail Automation:
The heart
of retail
Resilience & innovation at Gap Inc. 4 With the continued
Just months before the start of the 2016 holiday season, one of Gap Inc.’s distribution
centers was destroyed by fire. Here’s the story of how resilience and innovation saved double-digit growth of
the day. e-commerce, mounting omni-channel
fulfillment pressures and a shrinking
WMS takes on automation orchestration 10 labor pool, warehouse and distribution
Warehouse management systems have been used for decades to manage processes
carried out by people and lift trucks, while warehouse control systems governed center managers have never been under
automation. Now, some WMS suppliers are taking on more WCS-based visibility and more pressure to transform their opera-
business logic in areas like order releasing. tions through the application of auto-
mation and software to keep pace with
Bulking up at Canadian Tire 16
One of Canada’s largest retail brands took bulk handling to new levels of automation customer demands.
and efficiency at its new Ontario DC. In fact, your automation system is
now the heart of your retail operation’s
Cubing & weighing: In the money 20 success. All the pieces need to be tied
From slotting to shipping, dimensioning equipment delivers a rapid ROI as it provides
data that expedites inventory movement at several nodes across the supply chain. together throughout your warehouse and
distribution center operations, and there’s
Next-generation data capture emerges 24 now more importance than ever placed
New types of “edge” technologies promise new options for real-time location insights. on the software to sync the flow of work
Learn how these emerging forms of data capture might supplement traditional AIDC
as well as the importance of software platforms, analytics and applications that take
to ensure the system keeps ticking.
advantage of real-time location data. In our latest Special Digital Issue,
Modern Materials Handling has curated
Robots at GEODIS 30 several feature stories that neatly encap-
The global 3PL turned to mobile collaborative robots to rev up its e-commerce sulate the automation, software and hard-
fulfillment operations. One measurable result: a 2x improvement in productivity.
ware that are revolutionizing how digital
Modern mobility: Wear it while you work 35 commerce work. The Modern staff takes
In the hunt for the next level of productivity, mobile devices can help pave the you inside some of the savviest compa-
way—if they can get out of the way. nies in the U.S. and shares the steps
these operations have taken to stay on the
Automated storage: Making the future more certain 40 cutting edge.
With change the only constant, automation hardware and software is tasked with
ensuring success no matter what may come.

Adore Me Services: Small space, big automation 45

Adore Me Services packs a lot of automation power into a relatively small space to
deliver the right customer experience.
Michael A. Levans, Group Editorial Director
Pouch and pocket sorters shake up 51 Comments? E-mail me at
e-commerce distribution mlevans@peerlessmedia.com
Follow me on Twitter: @MikeLeva
With e-fulfillment driving the need for high-rate order consolidation, pouch/pocket
sortation systems address a number of top e-commerce challenges.

Editorial Staff Peerless Media, LLC

Brian Ceraolo
Michael Levans Sara Pearson Specter Wendy DelCampo
President and CEO
Group Editorial Director Editor at Large Senior Art Director MATERIALS
LS HANDLING
HA LIN
LING

Editorial Office
Bob Trebilcock Roberto Michel Polly Chevalier 111 Speen Street, Suite 200
Executive Editor Editor at Large Art Director Framingham, MA 01701-2000
1-800-375-8015
Noël P. Bodenburg Bridget McCrea Kelly Jones
Executive Managing Editor Editor at Large Print/Online Production
Manager
Josh Bond Jeff Berman
Senior Editor Group News Editor

2 The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail mmh.com

 SMART ROBOTICS

END-TO-END DC CONTROL

REAL- TIME ASSET HEALTH MONITORING

RESOURCE RETENTION STRATEGIES

FUTURE-PROOF SCALABILITY

LABOR PRODUCTIVITY

E-Commerce pressures continue to create unprecedented

complexities in distribution and fulfillment environments. If you’re
seeking answers to the question “What’s next?,” then we’re here to
help. Preparing for the future will mean increased integration of
warehouse automation software, labor-enablement and management
technologies, and robotics. The Connected Distribution Center
helps companies make the digital transformation to increase
reliability, improve utilization, and maximize productivity.

WATCH VIDEO
Honeywell Intelligrated is helping companies of all sizes make the
transition to a more efficient present and a more certain future.

For more information,

please visit
www.intelligrated.com
© 2019 Honeywell Intelligrated. All rights reserved. or call 1.866.936.7300.
 Automation/Retail

RESILIENCE &
Just months before
the start of the 2016
holiday season,

INNOVATION
one of Gap Inc.’s
distribution centers
was destroyed by
fire. Here’s the story

at
GAP INC.
of how resilience
and innovation
saved the day.

BY BOB TREBILCOCK,
EXECUTIVE EDITOR

I
Kevin Kuntz (left) is senior vice president of global
logistics for Gap Inc., and Shawn Curran (right) is
executive vice president of Global Supply Chain
and Product Operations for Gap Inc.
t’s November, which means the holiday season is right around the corner.
For most retailers, gearing up for peak is a matter of getting the right inven-
tory in the right locations and hiring enough people to get the projected
orders out the door.
Those tasks are daunting enough. But, how do you recover when a facil-
ity you were counting on for the upcoming season catches fire roughly nine
weeks before the first of November?
That’s a question Kevin Kuntz, senior vice president of global logistics
fulfillment for Gap Inc., and his team confronted on the morning of Aug.
30, 2016. The night before, a fire tore through a 1-million-plus-square-foot
distribution center in Fishkill, N.Y. The fire destroyed about $100 million
worth of equipment and inventory, and while all employees continued to
be paid, hundreds were impacted. What’s more, it took an important order
fulfillment asset offline right before peak—a little like losing the starting
quarterback on the eve of the Super Bowl. Punting isn’t an option.
“At Fishkill, we were already on our cross-channel logistics journey of
building out the shift from retail replenishment to online fulfillment when
that fire happened,” says Kuntz. “During the 2015 holiday season, we had
done a pop-up location on our Gallatin, Tenn., campus that operated for
about 6 to 8 weeks, so we had to move quickly to get that manual pop-up
facility back up for the 2016 season and plan for a larger facility for 2017.”
Working with a systems integrator (Vargo), Gap Inc. pulled together a
multi-brand, online fulfillment center in Gallatin that represents 500,000
square feet out of a total of 2.5 million square feet on the campus. It fulfills
online orders for the Athleta and Banana Republic brands year-round and
Old Navy during peak. The campus also includes a 1.2-million-square-foot
building servicing Old Navy stores and an 800,000-square-foot building ser-
vicing Gap stores and outlets.
While it popped up as a life preserver for the 2016 peak season, the
Gallatin campus today is also a showcase for innovation at Gap Inc. and
features multiple piece-picking robotic put walls; nine aisles of mini-load
and shuttle technology for automatic case storage and handling; a ware-

4 The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail mmh.com

 Phillip Parker/STUDIO at Getty Images
Among its innovations, Gap Inc. is
using a piece picking robotic put wall
in its packaging process.

house execution system (WES) for

balancing the workload through the
facility; a split-tray sortation system;
and automatic bagging and trailer-
loading technologies.
It’s a case study in risk manage-
ment and resilience and an innovative
approach to automation. “In the past,
distribution was viewed as a cost center
and now, because of innovation, it’s
a competitive advantage for us,” says
Kuntz. “If we can do our job quicker and
faster, we get a better seat at the table.
It’s been fun and energizing for the
logistics team to be part of this.”
Inbound cartons are conveyorized in the trailer or container and automatically delivered
to storage. A mini-load AS/RS provides high-density carton storage.
Trial by fire dedicated to e-fulfillment in Columbus,
At present, Gap Inc. operates a network Ohio; three DCs in Gallatin, Tenn.; an
of 10 distribution centers in North e-fulfillment facility in Phoenix; two dis-
America to handle store replenishment tribution centers in Fresno to serve the
and e-commerce, a total of 8.8 million West Coast; and one facility in Canada.
square feet. There are two distribution At one time, 14 buildings were in the
centers in Fishkill, N.Y.; a large facility network, but the company’s capacity and

mmh.com The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail 5

Automation/Retail

Orders are filled in a four-level pick

mezzanine connected by conveyor.

But innovation isn’t just an e-ful-

workforce allowed them to transform
their campuses from single-channel
operations to cross-channel fulfillment
operations that leverage cutting-edge
technology and automation—an initia-
tive they call Cross-Channel Logistics
Optimization (CCLO). As a result,
Gap Inc. was able to reduce its foot-
print down to 10 distribution centers
in North America while also increasing
capacity. That’s the power of innovation.
As with many retailers competing
in the online space, the catalyst for
innovation at Gap Inc. over the past five
years has been the growth of e-com-
merce. “When our online business was
merged into our overall logistics organiza-
tion, it became clear that technology and
innovation would be necessary to keep
up with the growth of e-commerce.” The
subtext: E-commerce is labor intensive,
especially at peak, and retailers and
e-tailers alike are congregating in the
same logistics hubs, going after the same
finite labor resource.
“We were hiring thousands of people
during peak seasons across our network,”
Kuntz says. “When you tax markets like
that, you quickly find out how hard it is
to find that much labor.”
fillment phenomenon. In its retail
fulfillment operations, Gap Inc. hasn’t
performed a manual pick from a pick
module in the past three years, accord-
ing to Kuntz. Cartons are put away
into storage in a mini-load system and
mixed-carton orders are assembled
at a goods-to-person station serviced
by shuttle systems. When an alloca-
tion drops, a carton is pulled from the
mini-load or from the shuttle. If the
carton’s contents are consumed, it
goes back into storage. Otherwise, it
goes to shipping. “In retail fulfillment,
we now just touch a carton when
we unload it from the truck and, for
full cartons, when it gets to a sorter,”
Kuntz says. “We have reclaimed so
much space in our distribution cen-
ters because we don’t have pick mod-
ules for retail fulfillment any more.
Only in our e-commerce operations.”
In the summer of 2016, Gap Inc.
was in the midst of remaking one of the
Fishkill facilities to expand its e-fulfill-
ment capacity by 300,000 units a day by
the start of peak. Then the fire struck

Robotic picking brings together AI, Big Data and machine learning
I t’s easy to think of robotics, Big Data, artificial intelligence
(AI) and machine learning as four distinct things. But
according to a recent presentation by George Babu, the co-
founder of Kindred, the robotic startup whose put wall tech-
nology is now in use at two Gap Inc. distribution centers, the
four come together when a robot is tasked to pick an item.
When the robot is presented with an item it has picked be-
fore, it has a history (think Big Data) to draw from—accessing
its database, it knows how it picked the item before. But what
happens when it is presented with an unfamiliar item?
First, using vision and sensors, it scans the item; artificial
intelligence—think of it as applying past experience—identi-
fies the area where the robot thinks it can pick up the item. If
that pick is successful, that information becomes part of the
robot’s historical database that can inform picking another
item that looks similar—think Big Data.
If unsuccessful, a robot pilot—a human at a remote lo-
cation who is monitoring Kindred’s robots in the field much
like a remote drone pilot—can take over the controls and
direct the robot to pick the item. Based on that experience,
the robot learns how to pick that item the next time it sees
it. And that’s machine learning. All of these technologies
are building on one another to make the robotic technol-
ogy a success.

6 The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail mmh.com

 Automation/Retail
Picked items are routed to packing by a split-tray sorter.
in late August. As it turns out, that’s
the kind of thing considered in Gap
Inc.’s risk management playbook. “We
drill for these kinds of events,” Kuntz
says. “When you’re sitting through some
hardcore simulations, it seems a little
far-fetched, but not now.”
The night of the fire, they were
on the job. While leaders at Fishkill
confirmed all employees were safely
accounted for, Kuntz and his team
brought out the playbook and reviewed
their options. Planning began by revis-
iting the pop-up site in Gallatin and
creating an additional pop-up site on
the Fishkill campus. Team members got
on the phone to redirect freight to other
locations. The next morning, all Fishkill
employees were informed they would
not miss a paycheck, even on the days
when they didn’t come into work.
Those were solutions to the short-
term problem of how to survive
the upcoming holiday season. The
longer-term solution they needed to
figure out was how to replace the
300,000-units-a-day capacity Fishkill
was supposed to provide before the
facility burned nearly to the ground.
How do you survive a trial by fire?
8 The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail
Shortly after that night, Kuntz received
a call from Vargo, the WES software
provider and system integrator based in
Columbus, Ohio. Vargo was already work-
ing with Gap Inc. to use its WES at Fish-
kill. Given industry lead times, it would
take 18 months to get new equipment,
meaning a good two years before Fishkill
could go live. But, perhaps, another solu-
tion was out there. “We had a customer in
Pennsylvania that had shut down a build-
ing that was using our WES software and
had conveyor and a bomb bay (split-tray)
and shipping sorter,” recalls Art Eldred,
Vargo’s client executive for systems engi-
neering. In short order, Gap Inc. had
made a deal to purchase and ship the
equipment to Gallatin, where it would be
ready to go after the season was over.
Somehow, it worked. “What I remem-
ber most is how many hours we asked our
employees to work that season,” Kuntz
says. “They were the unsung heroes,
working a lot of 70-hour weeks. But, all of
the retail stores got serviced, and we kept
up with online demand.”
Phasing in automation
At the start of 2017, with the 2016 peak in
the rear-view mirror, Gap Inc. began plan-
ning to transform the 500,000-square-foot
Gallatin facility into a highly automated,
cross-channel fulfillment operation, serv-
ing online and retail for the Athleta brand.
“Post peak, the split-tray sorter was
waiting for us,” Kuntz says. “We imme-
diately started dismantling racks to
make room for the sorter; we moved the
existing pick module to a different part
of the warehouse and moved in a four-
level pick module.”
The project was going to be com-
pleted in phases. In 2017, phase one
focused on conveyor and sortation.
Cartons were automatically received
onto an inbound conveyor system
and sorted to value-added services
as needed or to conventional carton
storage. Items picked in the four-level
pick module were inducted onto the
split-tray sorter and conveyed to pack-
ing at put wall stations. It was all tied
together with the WES system in a
waveless picking process that inter-
leaved e-commerce and store replen-
ishment for the Athleta brand. Rather
than create pick waves, the software
pulls work through the facility to main-
tain a constant flow of activity on the
machines, keeping them busy for the
full 60 minutes in an hour.
The work was completed in August
of 2017. The results met expecta-
tions. “That holiday, we averaged about
110,000 packages a day following a go-
live that was just 2.5 months earlier.”
Kuntz adds that despite the speed
at which the equipment and software
was implemented, very few issues
arose from a system standpoint. “The
WES software is impressive when
it comes to self-healing,” he says.
“You go to a location and if it’s short-
picked, the software orders replenish-
ment for the pick location and sends
a carton with the shorted material to
the pack location. Everything is hot
mmh.com
picked from reserve storage.” sphere has 20 cubbies, compared to 32 gave feedback on what was and wasn’t
In 2018, phase two saw the imple- in a normal put wall. When items drop working,” says Kuntz. “We worked with
mentation of nine aisles of automated into one of the robotic spheres, the Kindred to make modifications and
storage, both crane-based mini-load for robot uses a vision system to determine saw lot of potential to expand the solu-
high-density storage and shuttle storage. how to grasp the item. tion.” Currently six robotic put walls
That equipment will now be in place for When the robot presents the picked are at work in Gallatin, and even more
this year’s holiday season. item to a fixed scanner, the WES identi- have been installed in Fresno.
fies the cubby location for the put. In A little more than two years since the
Robotic put wall anticipation of the 2017 holiday sea- fire, Gap Inc. has not only risen from
Gap Inc. describes itself as an organiza- son, two of the robotic put walls were the ashes, it has moved its automation
tion unafraid to innovate, even if only installed in the Gallatin facility. Accord- capabilities further, with more on the
some of the projects result in a technology ing to Kuntz, the put walls were up and horizon. “We have a great group of people
that goes live (see box below). “A lot of in production within two days of their that loves making things better, faster and
folks hate change,” says Kuntz. “If you’re arrival. Autonomous picking started cheaper,” Kuntz says. “Our special sauce
going to do innovation, you have to have at 20% and has increased to over four is that success has built our confidence,
people who enjoy change and making times since the partnership first began. and the team enjoys looking at
things work. Rather than being skeptical, “We worked through that 2017 opportunities to lower costs and increase
our attitude is: How do I make it work?” holiday season with the two units and speed.” •
Ideas typically come from ProMat and
Modex, the two major North American
materials handling trade shows. At Pro-
Mat 2017, Gap Inc.’s supply chain team
came across a piece-picking robot from
Kindred AI, a California-based company
that was initially designed to move items
from one tote to another.
The AI and robotics company also
built SORT, a 360-degree sphere with a
robotic arm and cubbies like a put wall.
Following ProMat, Kindred brought
a prototype to Gap Inc.’s Fresno dis-
tribution center. “We looked at it and
thought, with some modifications, we
could make it work as an alternative to
a human packing station,” Kuntz says.
“We decided to do a proof of concept.”
To make it work, Vargo adapted its
software to provide a put location for
the robotic product. The chutes feed-
ing the two put walls are destination
locations for the split-tray sorter. Each

The Gallatin facility includes a number of

spherical robotic put walls (top). Items are
conveyed to packing. Packed orders are
sorted to shipping (bottom).

mmh.com The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail 9

 WMS
Automation/Retail

takes on
automation
orchestration
Warehouse management systems have been used
for decades to manage processes carried out by
people and lift trucks, while warehouse control
systems governed automation. Now, some WMS
suppliers are taking on more WCS-based visibility
and business logic in areas like order releasing.
Find out why this matters to e-commerce intensive
operations and why orchestrating automated zones
with people-focused processes is next for WMS.

BY ROBERTO MICHEL, EDITOR AT LARGE

W
arehouses and distribution centers
(DCs) are struggling to keep up with
the pace of e-commerce fulfillment
with its short order cycles times and
labor-intensive piece picking. This pressure combined
with the challenge of finding enough warehouse labor is
leading many DCs to turn to automation like put walls,
pick-to-light systems, shuttles and sortation to get the
right goods out to customers on time.
These industry shifts are making optimal use of auto-
mation more central to successful operations, and ware-
house management system (WMS) providers are taking
notice. Recently, more WMS vendors are incorporating
warehouse control system (WCS) capabilities into their
solutions. That’s a change for WMS suppliers whose
solutions have traditionally focused more on inventory

10 The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail mmh.com

 control, as well as directing people in picking and other
work activities, says Dwight Klappich, a research vice
president with analyst firm Gartner.
“If you look at most WMS solutions, they are
principally designed for people-driven processes,”
Klappich says. “And, over time, capabilities have been
added [in WMS] to make humans more effective—
with functions like wave planning or task interleaving.
mmh.com
Now, there is a realization that how we can make
work more effective in an automated world is going to
require some rethinking.”
This rethinking by WMS vendors is resulting in
more attention to WCS functionality. In some cases,
vendors have added order-releasing logic that builds
on WCS-based automation visibility, while in other
cases, WMS vendors offer WCS.
The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail 11
Automation/Retail
Robotics and automation adoption
In use today 34%
1-2 years 19%
3-5 years 20%
6+ years 10%
Unlikely to adopt 17%
Source: 2018 MHI Annual Industry Report
According to the MHI 2018 Industry Report survey, adoption of
robotics and automation is currently at 34%, but adoption is
predicted to reach 53% in two years, and 73% within five years.
WCS solutions emerged in part so transactional systems
like WMS or warehouse management modules of enterprise
resource planning (ERP) systems could communicate to one
middleware layer rather than having to interface directly to
control systems for individual pieces of automation. Most
WMS vendors, however, did not write their own WCS, but
rather integrated to WCS from warehouse automation equip-
ment providers or integrators who offer WCS.
WCS/WES on tap
But with more warehouses adding automation, and e-commerce
pressures on the rise, this is elevating the need for WMS solu-
tions that can make decisions based on real-time automation
status. Of course, WCS providers aren’t standing still either.
Several have gravitated upward toward WMS-level functions
like order releasing, evolving some WCS solutions into a cat-
egory known as warehouse execution system (WES) solutions.
Right in the middle of this WMS/WCS confluence is the
need to govern order releasing and drive a productive pace of
work across all zones of automation, so the systems in a ware-
house work cohesively. “The need is to look at everything as an
entire system so that you don’t release too many picks into the
system because it might flood the put wall toward the end of the
operation,” says Klappich. “There is more attention on how to
optimally release work into the overall system so it just continu-
ously flows through, and that’s where WMS solutions are getting
away from more purely people-driven processes.”
Sean Elliott, chief technology officer of HighJump Soft-
ware, a WMS vendor that is adding WCS-based capabilities,
agrees that WMS-level decisions increasingly need to be
cognizant of what is currently happening within all automated
12 The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail
zones. “A WMS’s strengths around planning, execution and
warehouse processes is made more intelligent when you have
better data from that automation layer,” says Elliott.
In HighJump’s case, the WCS capability is derived from an
established WCS from sister company Inconso, also part of
Körber Group, that HighJump has linked to WMS functions.
Earlier this year, HighJump announced it would be leveraging
that WCS as the basis for “automation aware” features within
its WMS solution. According to Elliott, those features are well
under development, with beta customers being identified and
the first implementation to be underway by the fourth quarter
of 2018.
The features revolve around automation-aware order releas-
ing as well as routing and work segmentation decisions within
the WMS, says Elliott. Beyond just surfacing WCS-based vis-
ibility within WMS, it really uses that visibility to change the
way the WMS does order releasing, arranges routing and work
segmentation. “It allows us to extend our value proposition by
taking better advantage of that real-time view into automa-
tion capacity and route decision making, in effect pulling that
visibility up into WMS to improve allocation and waving,” he
says.
Another best-of-breed WMS provider pursuing WCS/WES
functionality is Manhattan Associates. In May, the company
announced WES capabilities would be in its latest WMS
release, building on “Order Streaming” functionality it has
offered for a couple of years. Manhattan’s Order Streaming
is a way of handling order releasing for better single order
throughput and to accommodate insertion of priority items
into a concurrent picking session.
According to Adam Kline, senior director of product man-
agement for Manhattan, the WES capabilities are focused on
the orchestration of automation with WMS processes. A site
using Manhattan’s latest WMS could retain existing WCS or
other control systems to govern physical movement of auto-
mated equipment, but the WES capability would tap automa-
tion visibility to help improve WMS decisions.
“We’ve taken WMS and built warehouse execution capa-
bilities directly inside,” Kline says. “That provides the system
with a much more real-time view of capacity to allow it to
make decisions that drive high utilization. So, for example, the
system knows not to assign more work to [equipment] that is
close to being overwhelmed with work, while making sure it
isn’t overlooking assignments to resources that may be close to
being under-utilized.”
Kline says that while the initial approach with order streaming
mmh.com
was to use an approximation of a site’s automation capacity to
figure out how to release work, now with WES visibility built into
the WMS, the order-streaming algorithm has real-time knowl-
edge of available capacity to make decisions to keep work steady
and productive.
“The system knows at any given time if a sorter chute has
just cleared, for instance, creating more capacity to allow more
assignments to that unit sorter,” Kline says. “Or, if a cubby has
just been cleared on a put wall, there is more capacity the algo-
rithm can now assign work to.”
Under the latest WMS release, adds Kline, order streaming
techniques become the default “engine” for order releasing.
Early in the morning, the engine can group work for efficiency,
but as the shift continues and carrier pick-up times approach,
the engine automatically adjusts so hot orders get shipped on
time. “This is no longer just a rules-based push of work onto
the floor; it’s an optimization engine,” Kline says.
Real-time location solutions could help WMS
T he trusty bar code has done much to improve inven-
tory control in warehouses and support warehouse
management system (WMS) workflows, but now real-time
location solutions can bring real-time visibility to assets
or even people in a warehouse, says Mark Wheeler, Zebra
Technologies’ director of supply chain solutions.
Zebra, known for rugged mobile computer and bar
code printers, also offers locations solutions that work
with multiple edge technologies including radio frequency
identification (RFID) and ultra-wide band (UWB) devices.
In June, Zebra announced a portfolio of its MotionWorks
location solutions that could in some instances be used to
feed better information to WMS solutions, says Wheeler.
“Most warehouse management solutions, if well imple-
mented, are pretty highly structured and can do a good
job of optimizing workflow, but they do have limitations,”
Wheeler says. “Their visibility to operations is usually
transactional. Generally, a WMS knows where a material
movement starts and where it stops, but it doesn’t have
constant visibility into the paths being taken, dwell times
or congestion issues that you can get with real-time loca-
tion solutions.”
Under MotionWorks, Zebra now offers three solutions:
the MotionWorks Asset solution, the MotionWorks Mate-
rial solution, and the MotionWorks Yard solution. The
materials solution, says Wheeler, is focused on real-time
mmh.com
Multiple providers
Many vendors are involved in the evolution in the blending
of WMS and WCS software. While some WMS providers
are only recently adding WCS/WES functions, other play-
ers have been at this combination for years. These include
automation integrators that have evolved their WCS solu-
tions into the WES arena, as well as major warehouse
automation equipment vendors that have made software
acquisitions.
Some WMS providers have roots in Europe and offer both
WMS and WCS. Vendors such as Consafe Logistics, Ehrhardt
+ Partner Group (EPG), and SSI Schaefer are among the
vendors blending WMS with WCS. Indeed, the complete list
of vendors who can lay claim to being in the WES market is
quite long, with some coming at it from WMS roots, while
others come at WES more from roots as automated equip-
ment providers or integrators.
management of materials in factories, while the yard solu-
tion is a yard management system with real-time location
visibility.
The asset solution is probably the one most likely to be
used within a warehouse, where it could be used to track
assets like lift trucks, other vehicles or equipment, return-
able transport items (i.e. containers like pallets, kegs or
bins that need to be returned to a supplier or service
provider), or even people. If people were to be tracked,
the solution could do that with technology added to an
employee badge, says Wheeler.
The yard solution might not physically track assets
within a warehouse, explains Wheeler, but its real-time
control over yard activities would have a beneficial spill-
over on WMS processes. “The information from a yard
solution can integrate with WMS, and that visibility can
certainly help in areas like workload planning for the
docks,” Wheeler says.
Powered by Savanna, Zebra’s data intelligence plat-
form, MotionWorks can integrate edge data from multiple
sources, including UWB, passive RFID tags, Bluetooth
Low Energy (BLE) beacons and cameras. “We’re agnostic
on the source of the edge information,” says Wheeler.
“It’s important to maintain that independence because
different physical environments and operational chal-
lenges may point you to one technology over another.”
The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail 13
Automation/Retail
According to Corey Jines, vice president of North America
Services for EPG, a software provider that offers integrated
WMS/WCS, when a vendor’s WMS truly blends with WCS,
the combined solution drives decisions at the WMS level.
“When you have a solution in which WCS and WMS really
work together, that’s what becomes WES,” Jines says. “And
now you have these WES capabilities in effect thinking for
the system, so the warehouse can automatically adapt for
issues like seasonality.”
Jines agrees that the smarter order releasing that accounts
for the real-time utilization and material flow of automated
systems is a hallmark of a WMS with embedded WCS. How-
ever, he adds, the real endgame is e-commerce or rush order
fulfillment, so WMS/WES solutions should have workflows
and processes that make smart adjustments when it comes to
outbound logistics processes.
“From the point of view of the operations team, when
you say ‘order releasing,’ what they’re most interested in is
how that releasing is going to help them when it comes to
labor resource management and carrier planning,” says Jines.
“When you have WCS combined with WMS, now you have
better forecasting for your labor resources, and you are more
precise in how you can manage your dock availability and
turn times at the docks because you are able to narrow your
windows in the warehouse.”
Sensors and AI
At EVS, a Cloud-based WMS vendor, a core strategy for
the company is to provide simplified integration to vari-
ous applications including ERP systems, transportation
management system (TMS) solutions, labor management
systems (LMS), or specific equipment or controllers on
industrial networks. To this end, EVS has partnered with
integration middleware company MuleSoft to streamline
integration to ERP and TMS.
In keeping with this integration-friendly approach, says
Evan Garber, CEO of EVS, it isn’t developing embedded
WCS features, but does place attention to simplified integra-
tion to WCS or to specific automated equipment. “There
are many cases where you might want to integrate WMS
to industrial machinery. With print and apply stations, for
instance, every time a label gets applied, you know an item
or case is ready for the next step, so integration between
a print and apply station and WMS automatically lets the
14 The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail
WMS know that,” Garber says.
Another front EVS sees for integration is data from handheld
devices used in the warehouse. EVS’s WMS solution runs on
IOS devices such as iPads or iPhones, and the positioning sen-
sors in these devices can be tapped for geofencing and location-
related information, explains Garber. EVS is working with this
positioning data to enhance system security, so the system can’t
be used outside the building, and in applying predictive analyt-
ics to the data stream. The analytics show ways to enhance
WMS processes like dynamic slotting or picking management
and optimal routes.
“An IOS device like an iPhone can act like a big sensor,”
says Garber. “You are able to measure where people are, and
where they’ve moved. It’s not transactional data, but rather,
interesting and potentially useful data that surrounds the
transactions.”
Garber says EVS is in research and development on how
to glean specific insights from sensor data, but adds he’s
confident this type of analytics will be important to future
improvements in WMS. “At its most basic level, sensor
data and analytics are like a learning engine that can dis-
cover insights that you just couldn’t hard code into a sys-
tem,” he says.
Kline says Manhattan is also starting to apply machine-learn-
ing algorithms to how WMS handles order releasing. Machine
learning, he says, can quickly predict how long “draft tasks”
might take and use those insights to drive better order releasing.
The machine learning, says Kline, will be fed by WES-level vis-
ibility into the automation, and also might assess historical data
on how long similar tasks have taken.
Klappich points out that, generally, this blending of WCS
and WMS is mainly geared for DCs with high-velocity fulfill-
ment demands and multiple automated systems. The growth
of relatively low-cost robotics might broaden this need for an
automation savvy WMS, but for now, he adds, “the key to this
[trend] is that it is really for highly automated facilities.”
For WMS vendors making the foray into WES, however,
the new capabilities are changing up the WMS value proposi-
tion. As HighJump’s Elliott says, “With WMS, we can make
really good decisions about human activity in the warehouse,
and with WCS we can make really good machine-level deci-
sions. And now with the interplay between the two, we can
make the best facility decisions that fully leverage capacity to
better service the customer.” •
mmh.com
 Problem solved.

Rubik’s Cube® is used by permission of Rubik’s Brand Ltd. www.rubiks.com.

Warehouse fulfillment shouldn’t be complicated.

Superior results for e-commerce, retail,

PROVEN. wholesale and omnichannel customers.

30% improvement in efficiency.

SUCCESSFUL. Record-setting peaks.

SIMPLE. Flexible, scalable and easy to use.

VARGO® is the only company with COFE®, the warehouse execution system software that does for
fulfillment what Lean did for manufacturing. Learn more at 877.876.6384 or vargosolutions.com.

Maximizing Resource Utilization

VARGOsolutions.com
 Automation/Retail
Bulking up at
Canadian Tire
I
n a nearly 1.5-million-square-foot space
in Caledon, Ontario—a space equiva-
lent to a good-sized factory—a fleet of
43 automatic guided vehicles (AGVs)
shuttles pallets between work areas or
puts them away into very narrow aisle
storage. In one part of the building, a
250,000-square-foot area is designated
to an overhead tire-handling gantry and
storage area where two robots move
some 20,000 tires a day to fill orders or
stock reserve storage. Tuggers deliver
pallets that aren’t handled by AGVs to
the shipping area.
It’s the kind of equipment and activ-
ity you would expect in a highly auto-
mated manufacturing facility, especially
the AGVs and gantry robot. But, Cana-
dian Tire’s Bolton Distribution Centre
was designed with a system integrator
16 The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail
John Spaulding/Getty Images for Peerless Media
One of Canada’s largest retail brands took
bulk handling to new levels of automation and
efficiency at its new Ontario DC.
BY BOB TREBILCOCK, EXECUTIVE EDITOR
(Fortna, fortna.com) to handle the retail adds that the AGV fleet represents the
distribution of larger conveyable and most vehicles, especially the very nar-
bulk goods, such as lawnmowers and row aisle (VNA) AGVs, that the sup-
canoes, as well as non-conveyable items plier had implemented in one facility,
like those tires, to some 500 Canadian resulting in additional software code.
Tire stores across Canada. “When we were looking at technology
“This was the first time that we options, we realized that some poten-
know of that the tire gantry robotic tial applications of technology typically
system has been used in a distribu- applied more to manufacturing envi-
tion center, which meant a great deal ronments,” adds Geoff Woodcroft, the
of work from a software development associate vice president responsible for
perspective,” says Karen Adie-Hen- the distribution project, “but we thought
derson, associate vice president of the there were real opportunities to apply
Bolton DC, Canadian Tire Retail. She these technologies in retail distribution,
mmh.com
especially in regard to larger conveyable
and tire-handling applications.”
Opened in July 2017, the Gold
LEED-certified facility consists of
three 500,000-square-foot distribution
centers under one roof. Building A was
designed to automatically handle about
5,000 items that can be conveyed to
a unit sorter in their original packag-
ing or in a tote. Building B handles
the fastest-moving items, as well as
some oversized non-conveyables, like
swimming pools, trampolines and
televisions. Building C includes the
tire-handling area as well as long, large
or heavy items that require special han-
dling, such as hockey sticks and snow
blowers. Hazardous and flammable
items are also stored in a special area in
Building C. Each area was designed to
maximize the efficient handling of the
products managed in that location.
Along with the AGVs, gantry robot
and tuggers, the facility features:
• 244 dock doors divided between
inbound and outbound shipments.
• Five four-level pick modules for
conveyable products using pallet, case
and shelving pick systems.
• Voice-directed picking and pro-
cessing.
• 3 miles of hanging platform con-
veyor, including 40-inch wide conveyor
to transport larger traditionally non-
conveyable products.
• A cross-belt order consolidation
conveyor feeding 197 chutes—half the
chutes are designed to handle products
weighing 15 pounds or less while the
other half are outfitted with motor-
driven roller conveyor to control the
descent of heavier items. This is the first
chute design of its kind.
• RFID scanners in packing to scan
items to a pallet or a cart.
• Hydrogen fuel cell lift trucks will
be made operational at a later date.
• Fast and opportunity charging for bat-
tery-operated vehicles, including the AGVs.
mmh.com
Geoff Woodcroft, associate vice president, and Karen Adie-Henderson, associate vice
president, Bolton DC.
The DC handles 350 trailers a day
(175 in and 175 out) and 65 million
cubic feet of shipments per year in a
seven-day, two shift operation. After 18
months of operation, Canadian Tire is
realizing improved product flow, higher
fill rates and reduced handling costs.
“As we continue to improve our pro-
cesses, we see the KPIs get stronger and
greener,” says Adie-Henderson.
New location
With revenue of nearly $13.5 billion
CAD in 2017, more than 10 ban-
ners and 1,700 retail and gas outlets,
Canadian Tire Corp. Limited is one of
Canada’s largest and best-known retail-
ers. Canadian Tire Retail supports 500
entrepreneurial dealers across Canada
and generated more than $7 billion
in revenue in 2017 across its five core
areas: Automotive, Living, Fixing, Play-
ing and Seasonal. The company likes to
say it provides the products for the jobs
and joys of life in Canada.
The distribution network to support
all of the brands includes seven facili-
ties in Western Canada, six in Central
Canada and three in the Eastern part of
the country representing regional distri-
bution centers, transload facilities and
parts-distribution facilities.
The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail
Four of those distribution centers sup-
port the Canadian Tire brand. Facilities
in Western Canada and Montreal are
dedicated to regional distribution of the
fastest-moving SKUs. The Bolton facil-
ity ships bulk SKUs across Canada. The
fourth facility handles regional products.
Planning for the new facility got
underway in 2012. At the time, bulk
products were being distributed from a
nearly 40-year-old facility in Brampton,
Ontario. At one time, it was state-of-
the-art, with a tow line to move pallets.
“It had served us well for many years,
but it was at the end of its useful life,”
says Woodcroft.
Growth (along with changing order
profiles, such as more mixed cartons and
mixed pallets and smaller and more fre-
quent deliveries) called for not just more
capacity and better flow, but flexible
solutions that can accommodate what-
ever comes down the pike in the future.
Fixed, hardwired and expensive to main-
tain, the tow line was a major impedi-
ment to upgrading the existing facility.
In 2012, after a site for the new facil-
ity was selected, planning got underway.
Designing for flexibility
The design of the new facility was driven
by several factors. Top of mind was sus-
17
Automation/Retail
Two gantry robots can handle up to 20,000 tires per day.
tainability. “From the very beginning of
the design process, our real estate team
was committed to making this a LEED-
certified building,” says Adie-Henderson
(see box, p. 26). It has since been
awarded the Gold standard for LEED.
From an operational standpoint,
flexibility and scalability for the future
were key drivers. That created its own
challenges. “One of the difficult things
is that you’re doing the upfront plan-
ning years in advance of a facility going
live,” says Woodcroft. “What’s more,
you want to be able to have the flexibil-
ity and scalability to change or update
the facility once it’s opened based on
external business requirements.”
One example of the design for flex-
ibility concept was the choice of fork
and VNA automatic guided vehicles for
pallet movement. “The towlines were
fixed, but AGVs allow us the flexibility
to change routes or relocate the AGVs in
18 The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail
other parts of the building as required,”
notes Adie-Henderson. It’s also easy to
expand the fleet in the future. Since
going live, Canadian Tire is already look-
ing to expand the use of AGVs to other
areas of the facility, including the move-
ment of some hazardous materials.
A third important factor was a sys-
tem to handle some 20,000 tires a day,
ranging from fast-moving items that
are stocked in the stores to a custom
order for a replacement tire for a 1979
Chevy. This was driven, in part, by
the well-being of associates. Canadian
Tire’s culture is to leverage its associ-
ates for process improvements. “When
we talked to the team at the Brampton
DC, tire handling was the area they
suggested we automate since handling
tires is one of the most physical and
difficult products to handle in the
building,” says Woodcroft. “A newly
automated system could help improve
productivity in the business while also
meeting the needs of the team.”
They chose a tire gantry system
commonly used in tire manufactur-
ing after investigating alternatives
such as a simple robotic arm and tire
depalletizers. The solution begins in
the trailer in the receiving area, where
tire receiver works from an adjustable
platform on the end of an extendable
conveyor. The platform can be set at
an ergonomic height, eliminating over-
head reaching.
Following a scan by a fixed camera-
imaging system, the tires are directed
to one of two lanes where they are
handled by two robots. When an
immediate demand for a SKU is made,
it’s moved to a location for picking.
Otherwise, tires are palletized and put
away in a stock location in the very
narrow aisle reserve storage area by a
VNA AGV. The AGV can interleave
tasks, retrieving a pallet needed for
replenishment after a putaway move.
“When the system is at its best, it’s
doing inbound putaway, replenishment
and order picking for outbound all at
the same time,” says Adie-Henderson.
Orders are picked by the robot to a cart;
when four carts are full, a tugger opera-
tor delivers them to the shipping area.
More innovations were implemented
in the conveyable/totable warehouse,
which features five four-level pick
modules. Here, associates are directed
by voice to pick conveyable items—or
items like cans of paint that can be
conveyed in a tote—weighing up to 50
pounds to conveyor. Items go to a cross-
belt consolidation sorter with two types
of chutes: One handles items that weigh
15 pounds or less and another is outfit-
ted with motor-driven roller conveyor to
control the descent of heavier products
weighing up to 50 pounds.
Items are put in totes and palletized
mmh.com
for shipment in the pack station using
product segregation rules to prevent
putting food with aerosols or other
products. Once orders are palletized,
the pallet is moved by AGV to the out-
bound consolidation where they will be
loaded onto a truck for delivery.
While Building A is highly auto-
mated, Buildings B and C use conven-
tional materials handling and picking
processes directed by voice. Some hard-
to-handle products, like water heaters,
are handled by clamp trucks.
Continuous improvement
The Bolton facility went live in July
2017. Given the time between design,
build and go-live, requirements often
change before the start-up, and this one
was no exception. For instance, Adie-
Henderson notes, the company’s tire
business has grown by 25% in 2018. The
design, however, has proved to be flexible
and scalable—one of those key design
criteria. “We’ve been able to handle the
increased volume and at a reduced cost,”
Adie-Henderson says. In fact, within
Building sustainably at Canadian Tire
C reating a Gold LEED-certified
facility started with the choice of
building materials, including materi-
als with Canadian content, along with
a system to track and trace all of the
material used by Canadian Tire and its
vendors.
Some of the design features are
common to other LEED facilities. For
instance, LED lights are used inside
and outside the facility, and lights only
come on in work areas like the pick
modules when people are present.
Large windows let in natural light, fur-
ther reducing the need for energy use.
An automated system controls air flow
and circulation.
“Canadian winters are not for the
mmh.com
Items are picked to totes in pick modules and then conveyed to a cross-belt sortation
system for order consolidation.
13 weeks of going live, the facility was
receiving and shipping 1 million cubic
feet of shipments per week.
Continuous improvement has also
been important to building on those
early successes. Working with its system
integrator, Canadian Tire employees con-
tributed more than 400 ideas to improve
processes, and so far more than 130 have
been implemented. “That mindset is
such a part of the Canadian Tire fabric
and how we support our business part-
faint of heart,” says Adie-Henderson.
“But I can wait to turn on the heaters
much later in the season than in the old
building.”
In particular, the Bolton DC received
Gold LEED certification for the site’s
remediation and storm water manage-
ment efforts, drought-tolerant land-
scaping and low-flow fixtures reducing
water use, and high-performance
equipment reducing energy consump-
tion. The roof was designed to enable
the addition of solar in the future.
The facility will eventually use hydro-
gen-powered lift trucks with the hydro-
gen generated onsite. Canadian Tire
was the first retailer to generate its own
hydrogen onsite at the Brampton DC.
The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail
ners,” Adie-Henderson says.
Improved receiving processes have
resulted in reduced inbound unload-
ing times and the ability to turn dock
doors faster than at the old facility. And,
as noted earlier, KPIs that matter most
have improved on a regular basis. “In
one year here at Bolton, the gains in
safety and productivity are outpacing
what we did at Brampton over all that
time,” says Woodcroft. “The best is yet
to come.” •
The design also took employee
well-being into account. The facility
includes a well-appointed cafeteria,
a Tim Hortons coffee shop, a bicycle
storage area and a shower. Finally, the
new facility is delivering logistics ben-
efits that reduce the carbon footprint. It
is located nearer the intermodal yards,
reducing the distance traveled to get
product from the rail yards to the DC.
Moreover, car pooling is encour-
aged, and there are electric car
charging stations in the front of the
building. “A year ago, there was one
car,” says Adie-Henderson. “Now,
there are eight cars parked there on a
consistent basis. Employee behavior
is changing.”
19
 Automation/Retail

CUBING & WEIGHING:

In the money
From slotting to shipping, dimensioning equipment delivers a
rapid ROI as it provides data that expedites inventory movement
at several nodes across the supply chain.

G o back 30 years and dimensioning equipment was a somewhat unproven if

not radical idea.
Today, it is not just established, but it’s an essential component to
managing inventory in the distribution center and shipping department,
on over-the-road trailers, and in the billing cycle of parcel and pallet load
carriers. And by all indications, dimensioning equipment is getting more
important as you read this.
Just this summer, UPS raised the table stakes for correctly measuring
BY GARY FORGER,
CONTRIBUTING the dimensional weight of shipments. If shippers mis-state the dimensional
EDITOR weight of a parcel or pallet, a surcharge will follow.
Multiply that by the growth of e-commerce, not to mention steady
growth in irregularly shaped packages.
Then, add in the steadily increasing need for making best use of the
cube in the distribution center and the over-the-road trailer.
So what have you got? Nothing more than an equation for broader use of
weighing and cubing systems.

Why bother?
The two primary beneficiaries of cubing and weighing systems are DCs—
especially e-commerce ones—and freight carriers.
Quite simply, dimensioning systems collect and share critical inventory
data from the time that product of all types and sizes arrives at the DC
until it’s delivered to the final customer.
“Dimensional data is worth more than people think. This data is critical
across the supply chain,” says Clark Skeen, chairman of Cubiscan.
Skeen continues to explain how dimensional data also allows DC mangers
to make best use of real estate in their facilities. By dimensioning inventory

20 The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail mmh.com

 Weighing and cubing systems collect parcel data without slowing down the shipping process.

mmh.com The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail 21

 Automation/Retail

and feeding the data into a warehouse management system

(WMS), DC managers can maximize slotting efficiency. Sud-
denly, cube space utilization is maximized, reducing storage
costs. “If DC managers don’t store inventory optimally, they
may have to build another facility unnecessarily,” he adds.
While this practice is not new, “the leaders are on top of it,”
says Tommy Guest, national account manager at Rice Lake.
He estimates that 10% of cubing and weighing system sales are
tied to this application today.
Then, there’s the packaging and shipping process: the sweet
spot of cubing and weighing systems.
Starting in 2017, UPS and FedEx changed how they assess
shipping charges for packages from small parcels to full pallet
loads. The U.S. Postal Service follows the same practice.
Instead of using the actual weight, the carriers use what is
known as dimensional weight. This multiplies the three dimen-
sions of the package (also known as total package volume) and
divides it by a factor to arrive at what is known colloquially as
the “dim weight.” Shipping charges are then assessed according
to that number. The actual weight of the package or pallet is no
longer used to determine the shipping charge.
This summer, UPS went one step further when it imposed
a surcharge for incorrect dim weights supplied by shippers.
The list of these shipping charge corrections includes incorrect
or missing package dimensions, incorrect or missing package
dimensions that result in a correction to the dim weight, and
incorrect weights.
Suddenly, cubing and weighing systems are anything but
nice to have. Assessing back charges days later to recover the
surcharge is impractical at best. For most, that makes cubing
and weighing systems essential when that need is magnified in
It takes less than a second to collect both weight and
the e-commerce realm. dimensional data of parcels.
“It goes beyond getting the dim weight right,” says Jason
Wiley, business manager for transport and logistics at Mettler- Part of the flow
Toledo Cargoscan. “Shippers are increasingly seeing a need On the surface, cubing and weighing systems appear to be just
for more efficient handling in shipping as volumes and sizes one more opportunity to slow the flow of goods at the DC as well
increase rapidly. Dimensioning systems are part of the solu- as on trailers. Not so, says John Ashodian, SICK’s segment man-
tion here.” ager for logistics automation. In fact, “the dimensioning process
Furthermore, dim weight is applying increasing pressure is getting smoother as the technology advances,” he adds.
to reduce the size of all packages, explains Randy Neilson, Very little time is actually needed to accurately dimension
president of Cubiscan. “This is about putting more packages in shipments. Suppliers generally say it takes less than a second
polybags and taking out as much air as possible from boxes,” he for parcels and only two seconds for pallets. Systems with cam-
adds. Neilson estimates that half of shippers are far along on eras dimension more quickly than those without.
this developmental curve at this point. One supplier, Rice Lake, says it takes only 0.2 seconds to
Just as cubing and weighing systems help to cube out the weigh and dimension parcels. “Even at that speed, high accu-
DC, they do the same with trailers. And that helps to reduce racy is assured,” says Guest of Rice Lake.
costs for carriers whether full load or LTL. Beyond receiving, slotting and shipping, dimensioning sys-

22 The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail mmh.com

tems have other applications, too.
Pick-and-pack operations as well as right-sizing
packages are key. The ability to measure items that
will go into a shipping box prior to packing maximizes
efficient use of packages, minimizing size whenever
possible. After all, the smaller the shipping package’s
dimensions, the lower the shipping cost.
Beyond dimensioning, the cameras on some of
the systems provide an image of the package prior to
shipment. If it arrives damaged on the other end, the
claims process is simplified with the availability of an
image of the package’s condition upon shipment.
“When people realize all that these systems can do
for their operations,” says Guest, “there’s not much
grumbling about adding them to their facility, espe- Full pallet loads can be weighed and dimensioned on the fly.
cially when they hear about the fast payback.”
The ROI for cubing and weighing systems is gener-
ally short. Suppliers all agree that some applications
pay for themselves in as little as three months with 18-month
payback on the high end.
“The number of orders and receipts a day have a direct
impact on ROI,” says Neilsen. He points out that those com-
panies and supply chains that incorporate cubing and weigh-
ing information into other data streams typically realize even
greater returns on their investment in the equipment.
With so many uses, dimensioning equipment comes in
many shapes and sizes—and with good reason. There’s a
range of items being measured from packages just 2 inches
in height to full pallet loads. Mobility of the equipment
ranges from handheld units to fixed-position systems on the
DC floor or ceiling.
Some systems dimension and weigh static packages in
the packing department, while others sit over conveyors and
dimension packages as they move through a tunnel. Still oth-
ers are ceiling mounted and dimension a full pallet load as a
lift truck drives underneath.
The technology differs, too. Some use cameras, others do
not. Scales can be part of the system, but not always.
As would be expected, product development is active.
Earlier this year at the Modex show, Mettler-Toledo pre-
viewed a pallet dimensioner mounted on a lift truck.
Cubiscan is also introducing a large-format, pallet dimen-
sioning system that dimensions freight as it passes under-
neath the system on a forklift.
SICK offers a new handheld dimensioner for both LTL and
3PL applications. Meanwhile, Rice Lake’s lowest-cost unit
now interfaces directly with UPS Worldship.
mmh.com
Looking to the future
In fact, cubing and weighing data is becoming increasingly
important far beyond the applications already discussed here,
say experts. “Increasingly, there is inherent value in having
connected data at the shipment location and across the supply
chain,” says Ashodian.
“Cubing and weighing data closes the shipping loop
across the supply chain. It’s real-time information that goes
far beyond a package’s status. It becomes part of predictive
analytics and reducing uncertainty in the supply chain. The
equipment eliminates the what-ifs,” adds Ashodian.
As Neilson points out, the data collected by the equipment
is valuable far beyond its immediate use. By feeding the infor-
mation into related databases, dimensional data already aids
other processes in the supply chain. Going forward, he fully
expects the importance of this information to have broader
application and acceptance.
In fact, Wiley at Mettler-Toledo says dimensioning equip-
ment will be part of the change in how parcels and pallets are
handled in the future. “This equipment will have to interface
with warehousing and shipping systems using artificial intelli-
gence, not to mention autonomous vehicles inside and outside
the four walls of the DC.”
Another major driver here is Amazon, says Guest. He
expects sales of cubing and weighing systems to double
in the next five years as e-commerce volumes continue to
increase rapidly.
Perhaps Skeen of Cubiscan puts it best. As he has said before,
“those who realize the value of dimensional data will prosper.
Those who don’t will be wasteful and uncompetitive.” •
The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail 23
Automation/Retail

NEXT-GENERATION
DATA CAPTURE EMERGES

New types of “edge” technologies promise new options for

real-time location insights. Learn how these emerging forms of
data capture might supplement traditional AIDC as well as the
importance of software platforms, analytics and applications
that take advantage of real-time location data.

BY ROBERTO MICHEL,
EDITOR AT LARGE

T he newest thing in data capture isn’t so much a device

people use to “capture” data with, it’s the autonomous
gathering of data by sensors and other edge technolo-
gies. Even companies that provide mobile handhelds
and other data capture devices are onboard with the
notion that autonomous capture of real-time location
data will be a boon to warehouse operations.
“Data capture devices are only part of the equation,”
says Bruce Stubbs, director of supply chain marketing
for Honeywell Safety and Productivity Solutions. “Other
technologies like sensors and beacons are allowing us to
utilize information captured in real time, often autono-
mously. Today, it’s not only bar coding and RFID (radio
frequency identification) data capture that is important,

24 The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail mmh.com

 it’s also beacons and sensors and blending these tech-
nologies to support a connected supply chain.”
Honeywell, like some other providers of industrial
mobile devices, has embraced solutions for real-time
data capture and has put more attention on software
in recent years. Vendors generally recognize that bar
code data collection and some human triggered scan-
mmh.com
ning of passive RFID tags remain vital to supply chains,
even while technologies like ultrawideband (UWB)
and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons can enable
new types of real-time locating system (RTLS) solu-
tions. Research firm MarketsandMarkets estimates the
worldwide RTLS market will grow from just under $3.2
billion in 2018 to $8.79 billion in 2023, representing
The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail 25
 Automation/Retail
22.5% compound annual growth.
Some warehouses could benefit from
technology such as UWB. Unlike tradi-
tional bar code scanning with handhelds,
today’s edge technologies can pull in
data without human intervention. The
newer edge technologies also deliver a
near real-time stream of data to reveal
the position of goods or assets, rather
than a point-in-time data grab. That may
sound great, but vendors point out that
multiple factors need to be considered
in sorting through this next-generation
technology, including edge hardware and
infrastructure costs, how much precision
is really needed, the value of the assets/
goods to be tracked, and perhaps above
all, the software capabilities needed to
use the data.
New edge options
Real-time location tracking technology
like UWB and BLE beacons aren’t likely
to replace more traditional technolo-
gies like bar codes. That’s because bar
codes are cheap and effective for basic
track-and-trace purposes, even if they
don’t generate a constant stream of data.
Passive RFID tags also have found useful
niches, especially in retail supply chains,
and today they are relatively inexpensive
at the tag-level compared to UWB.
The issue with real-time location
tracking technology choices, says Kurt
Nehrenz, co-founder and chief of tech-
nology strategy with BlueCats, a provider
of real-time location solutions, is to
select the appropriate technology for
each application. As part of that assess-
ment, Nehrenz explains, organizations
need to consider the value of the assets
or inventory that need to be tracked, the
cost of the grid network needed to cap-
ture and transmit the data, and payback
factors such as whether real-time track-
ing can significantly increase productiv-
ity. “Real-time positioning [technology]
26 The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail
Established forms of data capture using mobile devices remain vital to operations, but
may be supplemented in some supply chains by real-time location tracking beacons
and systems.
is only as good as what it means to the
operation,” says Nehrenz.
UWB beacons are highly accurate,
but expensive. Nehrenz says roughly
$5 per beacon is currently “about the
floor” on UWB beacon costs. Given
that price level, he adds, UWB beacons
tend to get used on assets like picking
carts or other moving containers that
carry high-value materials. Having pin-
point visibility on such assets can have
a payoff by eliminating wasted time
looking for materials.
At one company that makes glass
panes for the automotive industry, track-
ing carts in real time with UWB bea-
cons has cut out the time the company
previously spent sending people out to
locate panes on specific carts. The Blue-
Cats location software is able to do an
association between panes of glass with
bar codes placed on a UWB-enabled
cart, thus providing real-time visibility
for every item on every moving cart.
“For some operations, they can lose
tons of time trying to find specific high-
value items that are on the move,” says
Nehrenz. “With our solution, when you
associate items to a cart, we give them a
software user interface where they can
simply type in the ID for any item, and it
will immediately show them where it is.”
BlueCats uses a variety of edge tech-
nologies, including UWB, BLE, global-
positioning system (GPS) sensor data
and RFID. Nehrenz says it’s important
that a location platform can work with
multiple edge technologies. While in
some instances a BlueCats software
engine is used on its own, through the
vendor’s application programming inter-
faces (APIs), the location engine can
pass information to warehouse manage-
ment system (WMS) or labor manage-
ment solutions, says Nehrenz.
A good location software engine, says
Nehrenz, adds context to raw position
data, such as determining when goods or
assets move between zones, or if some-
thing being tracked crosses into a zone
where it’s not supposed to be. “You’re cre-
ating and managing rules … so that when
things happen, you can do something use-
ful with the information,” he says.
mmh.com
Vendors generally recognize that bar code
data collection and some human triggered
scanning of passive RFID tags remain vital
to supply chains, even while technologies
like UWB and BLE beacons can enable
new types of RTLS solutions.
Location-driven systems
Vendors point out that while newer loca-
tion technology like UWB is exciting, it
is the optimization of processes based
on location visibility that matters. One
vendor with this view is Locanis, a Ger-
man software provider that offers a sup-
ply chain execution software system that
leverages real-time positioning beacons
and technology, including UWB.
According to Bengt Turner, CEO of
Locanis, while at first the company devel-
oped its own position tracking hardware,
today its focus is on software. Locanis
partners with providers of location tech-
nology vendors such as Ubisense and
Pozyx, using the resulting data to feed the
algorithms in the Locanis Site Optimizer
system. The system’s functions span
WMS, yard management, as well as trans-
portation event management.
“We are completely focused on opti-
mization—on how you distribute tasks to
assets and resources in an intelligent and
orchestrated way,” says Turner.
Since UWB can pinpoint the real-
time position of a resource like a lift
truck, a pallet or employees wearing
UWB-enabled badges to within centi-
meter accuracy, the Locanis system uses
that insight to assign work in the most
efficient way. “Our software algorithms
use real-time positioning to select the
right resources at the right time …
[which] minimizes idle time and empty
running of assets,” Turner says.
Within a warehouse, position knowl-
edge over resources and where inventory
is placed makes it possible to create effi-
cient storage in a flexible way, thus keep-
mmh.com
ing resources close together to minimize
travel and make it easier to interleave
tasks, says Turner. Outside the four
walls of a DC, real-time shipment track-
ing and yard operations can be managed
by the Site Optimizer software, making
use of real-time positioning data fed into
the system to optimize dock assignments
and yard activity.
Location management in the yard
and DC combined with some calcula-
tions around demand can also be used
by the system to predict when a DC
will exceed storage capacity and recom-
mend the movement of empty trailers to
a dock area to serve as temporary space,
explains Turner. “Real-time position
technology opens up a new dimension of
things you can’t do normally because you
know so much more about where your
resources really are,” he says.
Locanis’s users, says Turner, include
a global consumer goods company with
installations in Germany and China,
a global brewer with installations in
Austria, and more recently a system is
under implementation in Asia by a global
manufacturer of heavy vehicles. In addi-
tion to working with UWB, laser-based
The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail
positioning, RFID and bar code tech-
nologies, Locanis Production Warehouse
System can also use data from sensors on
production lines. “The goal is to manage
everything as a team of resources that
works together in terms of what is hap-
pening holistically,” he says.
Software as lever
The key to benefiting from RTLS data
is to have software that can monitor
parameters and trigger adjustments to
operations before problems escalate,
says Honeywell’s Stubbs. “The value
comes from a proactive dashboard,” says
Stubbs. “If you’re just looking at trends
after the fact, it might as well be a writ-
ten report.”
For example, says Stubbs, Honeywell’s
Operational Acuity solution is able to take
the latest activity data from Honeywell
voice-enabled warehouse solutions and
spot trends such as a pick location being
skipped or delays at certain locations,
so managers can take action. Similarly,
Honeywell’s warehouse execution system
(WES) solution, known as Momentum, is
able to monitor the real-time progress of
work going through a warehouse’s auto-
27
 Automation/Retail
mated materials handling systems and
see if work is starting to slow down or if
certain actions should be taken to smooth
out the flow of order fulfillment work.
Stubbs sees real-time location data
from beacons or sensors as another
source of data capture that can feed into
proactive analytics in solutions such as
Operational Acuity or Honeywell’s WES.
Ideally, he adds, managers should be
able to “subscribe” to specific types of
real-time data of interest. The range of
technologies involved might span bar
codes, RFID, location beacons, real-time
view of automation with WES, or voice
system activity and trends.
“It’s a bigger picture now,” says Stubbs.
“Data capture spans all these disparate
pieces of technology than capture data,
and instead of throwing it into a big
bucket—it’s a matter of logically parsing
it into buckets of information that people
can subscribe to.”
Another key to effective leveraging
of technology like UWB beacons is the
flexibility and capability of the “location
engine” or software platform that takes
in real-time data, establishes location
insights, and filters data to trigger alerts
28 The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail
and actions, says Mark Wheeler, direc-
tor of supply chain solutions for Zebra
Technologies. In addition to bar code
scanning devices and solutions, Zebra
has expanded over the years into RFID,
RTLS, and has an Internet of Things
(IoT) information platform called Savan-
nah. The Savannah platform’s location
engine that handles data from UWB and
other edge technologies, says Wheeler, is
an outgrowth of Zebra’s RTLS solutions
business.
According to Wheeler, location engine
software should be able to work with mul-
tiple edge technologies. “The key is that
as we integrate more RTLS technology
into more and more business processes …
that we make the capturing of the data,
the securing of the connections to the
edge devices, the analytics and the access
to that information, as standard and as
straightforward as possible,” he says.
Core functions of a location
engine, Wheeler explains, are map-
ping and positioning knowledge for
each asset being tracked. Using that
real-time view, an engine can generate
alerts—such as an asset leaving one
area or zone of a facility and entering
Handheld devices for data capture
have evolved, but in the future, may be
augmented by real-time positioning
technology in some warehouses.
another—that might be useful to a
system used for warehouse execution
or labor resource management. Such
alerts can be run and handled within
Savannah, Wheeler says, but the
platform is also capable of sending
out alerts to a WMS or other execu-
tion system.
Wheeler agrees with the view that
multiple factors like value of the
asset and cost of the hardware play
into which edge technology best fits
an application. UWB is well suited
to high-precision tracking of assets or
people (using special tags embedded
in employee badges), while for many
types of inventory, RFID or bar codes
may provide adequate visibility.
Within warehousing and manufac-
turing locations, Wheeler adds, one
of the top applications for RTLS is to
track the location of returnable trans-
port items (RTIs). Location technology
can prevent RTIs from getting lost, says
Wheeler, in addition to knowing where
the goods on RTIs are.
“The goals with real-time loca-
tion tracking generally are to drive
high levels of asset utilization … and
minimizing or eliminating the loss
of RTIs through better visibility over
those assets,” Wheeler says. “The vis-
ibility you get with RTLS also helps to
error-proof operations. For instance,
a solution can use RFID to monitor
the movement of goods on a dock and
generate a notification if something
has been sitting on a dock too long. It’s
about leveraging tags and sensors to
automatically generate actions to pre-
vent problems, rather than just detect-
ing a problem after the fact.” •
mmh.com
 P O U C H S O R T E R

JOEY POUCH SORTER IS AN ULTRA-FLEXIBLE SYSTEM

THAT MAKES USE OF POWER AND GRAVITY TO TRANSPORT,

SORT, ACCUMULATE , AND BUFFER ITEMS IN THE DC. THIS

UNIQUE SOLUTION USES POUCHES TO HANDLE AN INFINITE
VARIETY OF INDIVIDUAL ITEMS.

www.SDI.SYSTEMS/JOEY
Automation/Retail

Robots at
GEODIS The global 3PL turned to mobile
collaborative robots to rev up its e-commerce
fulfillment operations. One measurable
result: a 2x improvement in productivity.

M
BY BOB TREBILCOCK, EXECUTIVE EDITOR

ore than 6.5 million. That’s how many units GEODIS, the global
third-party logistics (3PL) provider, had picked to a fleet of mobile
collaborative robots (Locus Robotics, locusrobotics.com) as of mid-
December 2018.
175 and counting. That’s the number of cobots GEODIS had deployed
across its North American facilities as of that date.
2x. That’s the productivity improvements that GEODIS realized since it first
deployed a fleet of 21 bots in a facility outside of Indianapolis in January 2018
following a three-month pilot, according to Alan McDonald, senior director of
continuous improvement, and Kevin Stock, the senior vice president of engi-
neering.
Those are just some of the numbers that GEODIS believes make a compelling
case for mobile collaborative robots in warehouse and distribution environments,
like e-commerce, that involve a significant volume of each picks. In GEODIS’
case, the number of units picked during peak season increased 30% year over
year. But it’s not just the drive for more productivity that led GEODIS to robotics.
Customers are also demanding innovation.
“The market is definitely driving us to new technologies like robotics,” notes
McDonald. “Our customers are asking us what innovations we are looking at for in the same logistics hubs during record
the future. In fact, not a week goes by that we don’t talk to an existing or poten- low unemployment?
tial customer who wants to know where we’re headed.” “There is a lot of competition for
Adds Stock: “Delivering on KPIs and costs are considered table stakes for a associates in the areas where we have
3PL. Now, the question is: What else are you bringing to the table?” warehouses, so we have to make them
For GEODIS, one of the answers to that question is mobile collaborative a more desirable place to work,” Stock
robots, which also help the global 3PL address the other big issue for warehous- says. “We’re installing better breakrooms,
ing and distribution operators: How do we staff a facility with reliable and produc- better lighting and doing what we can to
tive associates at a time when more and more e-commerce facilities are opening make the jobs easier to learn and perform

30 The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail mmh.com

 From left: Kevin Stock, senior vice president
of engineering and Alan McDonald, senior
director of continuous improvement.

Chris Cone / Getty Images for Peerless Media

successfully. Robotics is part of that.”
This is a look at how one of the world’s
leading 3PLs chose and implemented a
mobile collaborative robotics solution that
it is now deploying across its footprint.
Investigating robots
With headquarters in Paris, GEODIS
is one of the largest 3PLs in the world
and generated more than $9.25 billion
in revenue in 2017, the last year for
which results are available. The com-
pany services 165,000 customers, with
40,500 employees across 120 countries
and 70 million square feet of ware-
house space. It moves more than 100
million parcels a year.
In the United States, GEODIS lever-
ages 140 facilities on 20 campuses, rep-
resenting 43 million square feet. It serves
six defined verticals, including retail
and e-commerce fulfillment, consumer
electronics, fast-moving consumer goods,
health care, industrial and automotive.
As with other 3PL providers, one of
the key trends impacting the business is
the growth of e-commerce fulfillment.

mmh.com The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail 31

Automation/Retail

“It’s not pallets and cases anymore,” An order selector scans an item to one
says Stock. “The volume of e-commerce of the order totes.

orders is soaring and that means a lot

more touches and a lot more people in a
very tight labor market.”
And, as with other 3PL providers,
GEODIS is looking to technology to
address those issues in an industry that
historically eschewed automation in
favor of best conventional warehousing
processes. GEODIS has installed auto-
mated pick towers, conveyor and sorta-
tion systems, and put walls in some of its
operations—and it is working on a project
to use drones to take inventory in its
facilities. But, in its e-commerce picking
operations, it still relied heavily on con-
ventional pick processes such as pick-to-
cart enabled by wearable wrist units and a
warehouse management system (WMS).
In early 2017, the 3PL concluded
that conventional was no longer sus-
tainable, according to McDonald. That
spring, GEODIS put together an inno-
vation team to investigate new technol-
ogies. Important criteria included: the
capital investment required, was it user
friendly and easy to operate, was it scal-
able and finally, was it mobile—if nec-
essary, how easily could GEODIS move
a solution from one facility to another?
That April, the new team went to
ProMat 2017 to see what the industry had
to offer. “We were deliberate about who
we spoke to,” McDonald says, “and after
we narrowed the solutions we were inter-
ested in down to collaborative robots, we
narrowed that down to a few providers.”
Over the course of the summer, the
innovation team visited sites where cobots
were up and running; they visited com-
pany headquarters to learn more about
the various providers and their cultures;
and asked the potential providers to
develop a business case. The fact that this
is a new technology, and that many of the
providers are startups, made the evalua-
tion a different process than if GEODIS
had been looking at a conventional, estab-
lished automation solution.
“You not only want the right solu-
tion, you want the right provider,” says
McDonald. “Vendors visited our site to
demonstrate what they could do. More
importantly, when we visited them on
their home turf, we wanted to know
what was on their road map. It was
great that they could do something now,
but we wanted to know what were their
plans for the future. What was in devel-
opment that they could tell us about?”
By the end of the summer, they had
chosen a provider for a three-month-
long pilot involving 21 bots. The decid-
ing factors went beyond the solution.
“Truthfully, we bounced back and forth

The new business model

A utomation-as-a-service is one of the emerging business models in the materials
handling automation space. In this model, a solution provider owns, maintains and in
some cases, even operates, the equipment or an entire automated warehouse for a fee.
The cost is often on a per-pallet, per-case or per-pick basis.
That includes robotics. Typically two or three options are available, similar to the lift
truck industry. They include a purchase option; purchase and rental option, where you
purchase a baseline fleet and then rent additional robots on an as needed basis, such as
peak and a robot-as-a-service model in which you pay a price based on how the robot is
operated, such as a cost per pick.
In this instance, GEODIS chose the service model, which is less capital intensive than
a purchase option. “It’s a very competitive market right now, and we spoke to multiple
providers who were offering a robotics-as-a-service model,” says Alan McDonald, GEO-
DIS senior director of continuous improvement. “I think they all know they need to make it
as easy as they can for people to adopt the technology.”

32 The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail mmh.com

Scale Your Intralogistics.
Vertical Buffer Module.
The solution for quickly
Goods to Person, expanding item ranges with a
Bin-Handling Technology limited storage area: Kardex
Remstar LR 35

Benefits at a glance:

• Efficient Picking
• Simple Integration
• Low Energy Consumption
• ”Goods-to-Person“ Principle
• High Throughput
• Customization
• Higher Flexibility
• Ergonomic Picking Stations

Application examples:

shorter • Picking of Slow-Moving Parts

movement paths • Kitting
lower staff
costs reduced
footprint • Buffering

higher picking performance

Watch the Video

fewer picking
errors shorter lower energy
ROI costs

Find out more about your custom intralogistics solution – we look forward to helping you!

www.kardexremstar.com 1-800-639-5805 info.remstar.us@kardex.com

Automation/Retail
between potential solution providers, but
we chose the partner we chose because
we not only liked their software, but
there was a good cultural match between
our companies, and they had the same
vision as we did. The fact that they had
experience in operations helped.”
Rolling out a solution
Implementing a new technology, espe-
cially one for which there isn’t a lot
of use cases to learn from, is often a
multi-step process. That was the case
for GEODIS, although the technology
proved itself fairly quickly.
It began with a planned three-month
pilot program using 21 cobots in an
Indianapolis e-commerce fulfillment
center. They developed a process to
batch pick single line orders to a tote
that would then be sorted out at pack-
ing. “Once we selected a supplier, we
did a deep dive, starting in October
2017,” says McDonald. “We compared
pick rates to the existing cluster pick-
to-cart process we were using in that
operation.” Additionally, there was some
software development for the interface
between the GEODIS WMS and the
robotic control system, along with some
modifications to the pack operation.
GEODIS quickly learned that in
addition to productivity improvements,
soft benefits needed to be factored into
the decision. For one, the training time
to get an associate up and running with
a cobot was quicker than learning how
to pick to cart. They were easy to oper-
ate. Today, the cobots can communicate
in the four languages most common to
the facility: English, Spanish, Burmese
and Chin, which is a language spoken
predominantly in Myanmar. For another,
associates liked working with the cobots,
Here, an associate uses a wrist-
mounted scanner to confirm a pick.
34 The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail
which they were encouraged to name
during the pilot.
“If you watch some of our videos
online, our operators say they often talk
to the bots,” McDonald says. “So, while
productivity was an important metric,
we also considered the engagement of
employees and the fact that we could
make a mundane task more interesting.
That leads to better retention.”
Another soft benefit that could not
be counted out: customer satisfaction.
“When our customers ask us what we’re
doing with technology, we can point to
the robots,” McDonald says.
In early January 2018, GEODIS for-
mally transitioned from pilot to go live.
During that period, communication was
important: It was important that the
whole team, and not just order selectors,
understand their jobs were not threat-
ened. “We held meetings for all of our
operators, whether they would interface
with a robot or not,” says Stock. “The
important word was: collaborative. We
made sure our operators knew that a bot
was not going to pick the product, so
this was about enabling our people to be
more productive while making their jobs
easier. It wasn’t about replacing people.”
At the facility level, there have been
ongoing learnings over the last year, as
GEODIS works with the cobots. “It’s
very easy to learn to pick to the bots. It’s
longer to learn how to operate them,”
says McDonald. “The more you work
with them, the more you learn about
what kind of robot-to-operator ratio you
need based on the volume of orders.” At
present, GEODIS uses between three
and six bots per associate, depending on
the volume and density of orders to be
picked in a given day.
In addition to productivity improve-
ments and customer satisfaction, cobots
are easy to implement compared to
other technologies. A new robot can be
received, unpacked and in operation in a
matter of hours. Similarly, an associate—
or an office employee helping out on the
floor during peak—can be picking very
quickly. Finally, for the distribution team,
it’s exciting to be on the leading edge of
an emerging technology.
“There is a perception that I think is
accurate that GEODIS is on the front line
of this technology,” says McDonald. “If we
were to wait until the technology matures
to adopt it, we’d be behind the curve.”
Adds Stock: “We want to be on the
cutting edge, and as a result, we’re
creating new opportunities for our
business, and for the people who work
for us.” •
mmh.com
 As wearable devices get smaller, the
Cloud computing power supporting
them is becoming smarter.

MODERN
MOBILITY
Wear it while you work
In the hunt for the next level of productivity, mobile devices
can help pave the way—if they can get out of the way.
BY JOSH BOND, SENIOR EDITOR

mmh.com The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail 35

E
Automation/Retail
ach year, the processing power, size and capabil-
ity of mobile devices improve. The same holds
for consumer or industrial devices, although the
appetite for cutting-edge technology is very dif-
ferent in those two sectors. Warehousing and
distribution are proudly risk-averse, and even those who
have sought to modernize are often limited by unwieldy
legacy software and entrenched processes that have changed
little over the decades.
Call it a perfect storm, tipping point or paradigm shift, but
a confluence of factors is poised to rapidly and radically trans-
form the use of mobile devices in warehouses and DCs.
The impending support sunset for Windows mobile operat-
ing systems (OS) is driving a mass migration to Android OS, a
platform that promises lifelong support for enterprise devices,
easy integration of smart devices like tablets and wearables,
and improved security.
Cloud-based or managed services are growing in popularity,
decreasing the IT burden while increasing long-term opera-
tional agility. Analytics, artificial intelligence, neural networks
and machine learning are improving the ability of mobile
devices and voice-directed solutions to capture and process
data to optimize operations.
This is all happening against a backdrop of vastly greater
savviness among users and solution providers.
“There’s a lot of awareness now in terms of the ‘fit for
use’ of a device,” says Krishna Venkatasamy, chief technol-
ogy officer for Lucas Systems. “Ten years ago customers
would buy a scan gun whether they needed it or not. But
now if they’re using voice for data entry, why carry the gun,
too? Buyers are smarter and are deciding on devices based
on their fitness for the application.”
The industry is moving toward shrinking form factors for
devices, Venkatasamy says, especially in voice-directed appli-
cations. In fact, he says some customers are now working
to use Lucas’ technology on a smart watch. If users seldom
need a screen, a smart watch’s processing power, memory and
Wi-Fi connectivity make it a fit for a stand-alone device.
As devices become smaller, more capable and more wear-
able, they are rewriting the concept of “data entry,” accord-
ing to Bruce Stubbs, director of supply chain marketing at
Honeywell Safety and Productivity Solutions. In the not-too-
distant future, technology elements like voice, touchscreens
and even augmented reality will combine to create a more
natural human interface.
“Having to hold, point and pull a trigger is mechanical, and
takes time and thought,” Stubbs says. “Speaking, listening and
36 The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail
seeing are second nature. At this point, the idea of utilizing
synergies between man and machine is not a far reach but a
small nudge.”
Technology on the move
Bryce Keeney, chief technology officer of PC manufacturer
Teguar, remembers becoming fascinated by the variety of
ways customers wanted to use a mobile computer. The same
device might be docked to a station or forklift, carried by hand
or outfitted with any number of accessories to support tasks
throughout a facility.
Although the form factor excited them, many customers
underestimated the software implications of moving to a tablet
from a fixed terminal with large screen, keyboard and mouse.
“If customers haven’t put any real money into the soft-
ware side, they’re taking a program designed to be dis-
played on a 15-inch monitor and want it to fit on a 10-inch
tablet,” Keeney says. “Without rewriting software, that can
be difficult.”
Desktop screens tend to be oriented in landscape mode—
wider than tall—but not tablets. When a touchscreen replaces
a mouse, buttons should be bigger. Keeney says it might make
sense to pre-program a tablet’s physical buttons to perform the
most common actions, or sequence of actions.
“Just asking these questions is a great step that some peo-
ple aren’t thinking about,” Keeney says. “When I go and watch
a warehouse operator who has been doing something for 10
years, they’re crazy fast. If you plan new technology deploy-
ments so operators can continue to be excellent, you’ll need
to know whether making a button bigger saves 2 seconds from
each transaction.”
Mark Wheeler, director of supply chain solutions for Zebra
Technologies, agrees, adding that touch-based user interface
is “no small matter.” While it’s still new to many warehouse
operations whose technology adoption is lagging, new hires and
trainees are likely to be familiar with the interface. Wheeler
says the richer, more productive and easier-to-learn touchscreen
has big appeal for rapid training, onboarding and closing the gap
between the best workers and the average.
“There are still a lot of gains to be had in the warehouse simply
by taking advantage of what the Android platform has to offer,”
Wheeler says. “Leveraging it involves designing the input and
output of the technology—what information has to be presented
to the worker and what data they in turn capture—to achieve a
smoother flow of data and smoother workflows.”
For example, purpose-built wrist-worn wearable devices have
been available for the same use case for 25 years: each pick and
mmh.com
Big ideas open up completely new perspectives.
We have taken another step towards mechatronic integration with
the combination of the new g500 gearbox range and the Lenze Smart
Motor. By using this single drive solution you will be able to cover a
broad spectrum of applications and reduce the number of variants
you need by up to 70%. Thanks to the excellent levels of energy
efficiency and the long life expectancy, your machines will achieve
more productivity with a maximum degree of reliability.
Click here to learn more about our innovative Smart Motor solutions.

Visit us at PACK EXPO 2019 – Booth LS-6272 | Sept 23-25 | Las Vegas, NV As easy as that.
 Automation/Retail
Ergonomic design for wearables can ensure
productivity and comfort for entire shifts.
case pick. But the same devices paired
with the right software can serve tasks
like picking, sorting and, increasingly in
e-commerce, returns. Returns are often a
very labor-intensive process, Wheeler says,
and ergonomic, multi-function devices
can help speed the process of identifying,
documenting and categorizing items.
“For the warehouse, this is a huge
one-time transition away from the char-
acter-based entry that has been around
since the advent of real-time warehouse
management systems,” he says. “It’s an
opportunity to fundamentally change
systems that are mission-critical. I don’t
think it’s an overstatement to say this is
the richest opportunity for future-proof-
ing ever in the industry.”
The wearhouse
Wearable devices are rapidly gaining
traction, according to Stubbs, who cites
Honeywell research indicating as much
as 85% of customers plan to move to
some sort of wearable device in the next
three to five years.
“Throughout 2018, clients in general
have affirmed that research,” Stubbs says.
“Going from paper to voice is obviously
a huge gain, but going from handheld to
wearable can be a game-changer as well.”
When a device goes from being hand-
held to fastened to a worker’s body, it
opens several ergonomic concerns. The
concept of ruggedness is completely dif-
38 The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail
ferent, Wheeler says, since the threat
is not drops but thumps and abrasions.
While the finger, wrist, arm or head
mount better be secure, it shouldn’t be so
secure it could cause injury if caught on
something. And if the goal is to improve
productivity, it had better be comfortable.
“It’s easy to build something that’s
comfortable for an hour,” Wheeler says,
“but we need something that doesn’t just
work for a pilot, but works for years.”
Attaching a device to a worker also
unlocks all-new performance data for
managers. Turnover, hiring and retain-
ing remain a challenge, but could be
impacted by an enhanced ability to iden-
tify and reward top performers. Paired
with analytics, this data can reveal even
more valuable trends.
“When you’re monitoring every trans-
action you can see what work they’re
doing and how. By the way they’re oper-
ating, you can find who could be at risk
of an injury,” Stubbs says. “Or by the way
their performance has been trending for
the last couple of weeks, is the employee
a candidate to leave?”
Labor management software has
predictors that can capture that type of
information and produce a sort of risk
rating to management, Stubbs says. If
the bottom five people are likely to leave,
maybe they need advanced training or
other engagement to try to avoid a no-
show on Monday.
Even equipping workers with a con-
sumer smart phone leverages the device’s
array of sensors and cameras. EVS has
developed a warehouse management
system (WMS) that is native to iOS, the
Apple operating system on iPhones and
iPads. The Cloud-based software uses
artificial intelligence and machine learn-
ing to optimize processes and deliver
tasks to an associate’s iPhone.
An Apple device’s platform of sen-
sors enables managers to measure the
previously unmeasured, like number of
steps, speed, travel routes, or use the
cameras to capture images of goods and
shipments. Instead of walkie-talkies
and cell phones, it becomes possible to
FaceTime someone. Offices in Boulder,
Colo., can contact a picker in Tennes-
see to find a mistake and fix it, Brown
says, and much quicker than a supervi-
sor could go and find the picker.
One of the most promising features
of smart phone deployment is more
accurate indoor location. GPS reception
works outdoors, but indoors it struggles
with racks or metallic inventory. Precise
locations enable the blending of robotics
and people, choreographed through the
software. Lucas Systems’ Venkatasamy
says current location technology tends to
be limited to predicting locations. Citing
studies, he describes how collaborative
robots, or cobots, could work better with
humans if the system can guide while
enabling voice-based communication
between humans, robots and software.
“Moving from a gun to a smart phone
to a watch to glasses, these are very incre-
mental improvements in what happens
at the pick face,” Venkatasamy says. “But
coordinating pickers alongside robots
helps address changing order profiles,
customer requirements, and all the things
that make distribution more complex.
These are enabled by software and are
less about hardware.”
mmh.com
Software doesn’t have
to be hard
That software is more capa-
ble, powerful and sophis-
ticated than ever before,
but it is also simpler. Scott
Deutsch, president of North
America for Ehrhardt +
Partner, recalls the old way:
Investment in a business
intelligence tool accompa-
nied by one or two “data
jockeys” who built reports
that were static.
“You’d see a couple screens posted on
picks per hour, error rate, elements we’ve
seen in business forever,” Deutsch says.
“Now there’s a whole level of analytics
that can be shared beyond just the one or
two people to give a sense of the perfor-
mance of the whole business in real time.”
Analytics engines have multiple data
Medline increases warehouse productivity
M edline is a global manufac-
turer and distributor serving
the healthcare industry with medi-
cal supplies and clinical solutions.
Headquartered in Northfield, Ill.,
the company offers more than
550,000 medical devices and sup-
port services through more than
1,400 direct sales representa-
tives who are dedicated points of
contact for customers across the
continuum of care. After choos-
ing new touch computers for its
warehouse operations as part of
an upgrade for its voice-directed
picking solution, the company
improved warehouse picking,
increased employee productivity
and future-proofed its enterprise
with an Android-based device.
The new touch computer (Zebra
Technologies, www.zebra.com),
paired with the supplier’s rugged
Bluetooth headset, helps the com-
pany quickly and efficiently process
mmh.com
sources so they can create multiple
types of views, customized and updated
in real time. It is not a reinvention of
any wheels, Deutsch says, but is the way
businesses have created data integration
forever. Order data and purchasing data
sits on the enterprise resource plan-
ning (ERP) system, feeds to the WMS,
which feeds to voice, and analytics tools
more outbound customer orders
with its voice-directed picking solu-
tion. With the voice-directed picking
system and work execution system
(Lucas Systems, lucasware.com),
workers are able to move freely with-
out a wired headset as orders are
processed.
The new computers and software
also enabled Medline to transition its
warehouse teams seamlessly to an
Android OS as Windows CE support
ends in 2020.
“It functions like a smart phone
with the ruggedness and security of
an industrial device, says Paul An-
cona, vice president of engineering
operations for Medline. “That was a
critical differentiator for us and makes
it easy to deploy across our ware-
house branches where we already
have seen an increase in productivity.
It also offers us Android OS, which
we wanted to future-proof our tech-
nology.”
The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail
Wearables are already changing the
way, place and detail in which data is
collected.
are just another example of software that
can use data to improve operations.
Neural networks, on the other hand,
are a tad less familiar, and are the
engines behind Alexa, Siri and similar
products. Because saying something
multiple times is unacceptable in a
warehouse, new voice systems leverage
warehouse-specific neural networks to
optimize performance beyond consumer-
grade voice assistants.
“The 95% accuracy of Alexa would
get you tossed out the door in a ware-
house,” Deutsch says. “There’s a big dif-
ference between that and 99.99%, and
you could not get enough computing
performance to do that until a year ago.”
Neural networks and machine learn-
ing enable software to learn from its mis-
takes, using every transaction to continu-
ously refine itself. Deutsch says the past
24 months have produced a more than
25% improvement in voice recognition—
even among some of the most challeng-
ing global dialects.
While software makes itself smarter,
it also makes life less difficult for IT
staff. Deutsch notes that more than half
of his company’s new business comes
from managed services, or SaaS (soft-
ware as a service), which makes opera-
tions personnel less dependent on IT
staff for support.
“People reading this are in opera-
tions, but investment comes from IT,”
Deutsch says. “More importantly, we’re
finding that CIOs are interested in mov-
ing more of the budget into innovation
as opposed to the traditional 99% of the
budget going to system maintenance.
Now they can think creatively about
what they might like to do or was never
affordable before.” •
39
Automation/Retail

40 The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail mmh.com

 AUTOMATED STORAGE:

Making
the future
more certain
With change the only constant, automation
hardware and software is tasked with ensuring
success no matter what may come.

BY JOSH BOND, SENIOR EDITOR

B
y now, many readers’ peak seasons
have begun to wind down. Of course,
that means strategizing for next year
can begin in earnest. But for those
seeking to modernize distribution opera-
tions, plenty of reasons can be found to be
optimistic as the new year unfolds. Sure, the
labor market remains bleak and service levels
somehow keep getting more demanding, but
the hardware and software to meet those chal-
lenges has come a long way in recent years.
Automated storage and retrieval systems
(AS/RS) are prominent in this new solution
mix for operations of all sizes. Most AS/RS
systems are designed specifically to offset
fluctuations in labor, volume and SKU/order
profiles. Still, the pace of change has shifted
the goalposts farther to the extremes.
Modularity and flexibility are now the driv-
ing forces behind innovation as automation
seeks to shed its legacy as a fixed, long-term
commitment only for those with deep pock-
ets and massive facilities. In fact, as solution
providers describe it, that legacy is officially
old news.
“With the rise of robotics and new auto-
mated solutions, you can make plans that
are different than five years ago,” says Jerry
Johnson, business development manager for
Vanderlande Industries. “That growth plan was
basically your only option, and you had limited
decisions in response to change. Now, there are
more flexible growth opportunities.”
Charting the course
Given the unpredictability of the market and
our behavior as consumers, Johnson says, it can
be hard to plan. In the coming years, will you
need more throughput or more SKUs or will
the quantity of items per order change? Any

mmh.com The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail 41

 Automation/Retail
Automated storage can support the flexibility to meet peaks as needed while reducing temporary labor by 70%.
technology that potentially restricts nim-
bleness in the face of those possibilities is
a non-starter. In recent years, as the entire
industry sought to clear out the cobwebs
of pre-Amazon operations, the conversa-
tions around investment in automation
were exceedingly cautious.
“With that caution, a past project
might typically have a target or peak
year three to five years after go-live,”
Johnson says. “Today customers are con-
sidering seven to 10-year horizons, and
one project had an even longer plan for
their DC.”
Whatever the size or scope of the
project, Johnson says activity and invest-
ment are growing at “tremendous” levels.
The confidence boost comes from a
better understanding of how to phase a
project to ensure flexibility.
“The most important thing is that it
42 The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail
provides us with a better opportunity to
do a good job, find the right solution, and
define the right way to get scalability into
the designs,” Johnson says.
Shuttles once bound to a single aisle
can now move from one to another. You
can add extra shuttles and lifts to boost
throughput without adding extra aisles.
Want to move an AS/RS from one loca-
tion to another inside a facility, or to
another facility altogether? No sweat.
Additionally, the latest software stands
ready to easily support these changes.
This flexibility is supported by the
growing popularity of the microservices
architecture for software—an approach
that allows for compact, less expensive
and really modular hardware and soft-
ware elements.
“Especially with microservice-based
IT products coming up, that means
you can create software that’s far more
modular. I mean really modular,” Johnson
says. “It makes it extremely simple to just
add new functionalities. So if you want
to add batching, it’s easy. We now have a
true plug-and-play process.”
Ken Ruehrdanz, manager of the dis-
tribution systems market for Dematic,
says increased standardization and less
customization makes system support a
much simpler process for customer and
system supplier.
“In the past if you ever needed support,
it was for a one-off system. As a user, I
don’t want to be the only one using this
solution,” Ruehrdanz says. “An AS/RS—or
any materials handling automation—is an
ongoing, living solution that is constantly
being adjusted. It’s very rare to put one in
and have it just stay the same.”
So when 10,000 new SKUs come
mmh.com
 Click here to see the Warehouse of the Future

Be innovative • Be committed • Be successful

State-of-the-Art Success

Fully Automated case picking to mixed order pallets was

long thought to be impossible. WITRON forever changed this
perception when it developed the Case Order Machine (COM).

Success Story
• More than 800 palettizers in more than 52 projects
• Proven reliability and return on investment with evidence of 80% of new
projects generated from existing clients
• Successful implementation in Ambient, Perishable and Frozen environments
• Over 3 billion cases picked with COM since implementation.
Over 5 million cases picked with COM per day
Advantages
• Automatically pick & palletize more than 15,000 unique SKUs in one operation
• Complete elimination of product pickfront
• New warehouse footprint reduction of up to 50%
• Transportation cost reduction of 10%
• Store aisle aligned pallet loads reduce shelf stocking time by 75%

General contractor for the design, realization, and the operation of storage and picking systems for retail business
and industry.
www.witron.com
 Automation/Retail
along, the software and controls can stay
identical, but the system will be ready
to handle a different tote size or load-
handling devices.
The workstations at the AS/RS are
another area where adaptability is impor-
tant. In the early phases of goods-to-per-
son solutions, Ruehrdanz says stations
were very customized and performance
varied from one to another. Now that
they are standardized, pre-tested and
pre-engineered, they can provide more
predictable system performance.
For example, the modular worksta-
tion might have started as a 1:1 setup
with a single donor tote and single
order tote at a time. If the activity pro-
file changes and it now makes sense
to fulfill retail and e-commerce orders,
the station can be easily adjusted to a
1:6 setup handling six orders at a time.
Modular hardware and software mean
that transition can occur in a matter of
days as opposed to several weeks.
To verify the effectiveness of any
modifications before peak, Chris Cap-
shaw, executive director of logistics
solutions sales for SSI Schaefer Systems
International, recommends simula-
tions—virtual and real. This will prove
out throughput and efficiency while
highlighting any shortcomings with
slotting or other strategies. Test runs
might include allowing the system to be
backed up under controlled conditions
and then releasing the pent-up orders to
simulate peak volume.
Having identified that being able to
sell more SKUs is an advantage, Cap-
shaw says many companies are focused
on a system’s ability to add SKUs, either
by organic growth or as the result of an
acquisition or other one-time spike in
SKU count. This strategy is among the
factors driving increased focus on direct
case handling to either supplement or
replace decanting into totes.
44 The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail
Reverse logistics
Getting orders out the door is one thing,
but processing returns is a fundamental
element of system design for e-com-
merce companies. “Online shopping
continues to increase, and the percent-
age of returns is now significant enough
that the volume is there to think about
automating it,” Ruehrdanz says. “The
business case is becoming stronger.”
Ruehrdanz says pouch sorters are a
great fit for these companies due to their
ability to act as a sorter, buffer and tem-
porary storage. After a return is checked
in, refunded and identified for potential
repackaging, it can be placed in the
pouch sorter.
“It then stays in suspended anima-
tion, so to speak, until another order
comes in for that item,” he says. “It’s
more effective since you don’t have to
put it back into storage.”
Pocket sortation systems could also
be an alternative to unit sorters and put
walls. Put walls will remain a viable
option, but Capshaw says they can
require more labor and two to three
more touches per order. Alternatively,
the larger initial investment in pouches
is compatible with robotic loading where
a robot places items on a conveyor that
then drops items into a pouch. Pouch
sorters rated for 3-kilogram loads are
suited to fashion items, while a 10-kilo-
gram model might be better suited to
general merchandise.
“What’s really driving small and medium-
sized businesses to automate is labor avail-
ability,” Capshaw says. “If they were used to
hiring 2,000 through peak before, afterward
they might need only 600.”
Modularity and scalability of AS/RS
systems also lends itself to smaller sys-
tems, which are not exclusively appealing
to small operations. Even large compa-
nies are developing what the industry
is calling “micro-fulfillment centers,”
Ruehrdanz says. The concept might con-
sist of an automated system in the back of
a retail store where high density is ideal.
Inventory in such systems is then used for
fulfilling online orders or buy online, pick
up in store (BOPIS) orders. This prevents
in-store pickers from competing with
walk-in customers, alleviates pressure on
regional DCs and enhances responsive-
ness to local customers. This has already
begun with grocery companies, Rueh-
rdanz says, but will soon move into gen-
eral merchandise.
Another variant of the micro-fulfillment
center is a stand-alone facility in a high-
traffic urban area that acts only as a pick-
up center or place to dispatch delivery
trucks. Until lately, few would think of put-
ting a warehouse in an urban area, but AS/
RS can ensure such a facility is compact
and efficient. A shuttle-based inventory
storage and goods-to-person workstation
can reduce order fulfillment cost and pro-
cessing time.
A goods-to-person system can make
any retail store employee productive, but
Ruehrdanz notes the increasing popularity
of goods-to-robot variants.
“We see a trend of using goods-to-robot
for piece picking,” he says. “It’s small now,
but there’s a significant growth potential.
That trend will bring the AS/RS along
with it.”
Vanderlande’s Johnson also empha-
sizes the micro fulfillment center trend,
where the building of future central DCs
will be accompanied by nearby specialty
satellites.
“If the ideal solution is more storage-
driven or throughput-driven, that can help
us decide the direction of the technology
used,” Johnson says. “Do you anticipate an
increase in picking, storage or value-added
services, even something as simple as a
paper wrap? We can work with a client
to understand that and prepare them for
future success.” •
mmh.com
 ADORE ME SERVICES:
SMALL SPACE,

BIG
AUTOMATION
Krutin Shah (center), director of distribution, and his
team at Adore Me Services.

Adore Me Services packs a lot of

automation power into a relatively
small space to deliver the right
customer experience.

A
BY BOB TREBILCOCK, EXECUTIVE EDITOR

nyone who has watched “Tiny House

Hunters” knows that going small is one of
the hottest trends in the real estate mar-
ket. Whether it’s baby boomers downsizing for retire-
ment or young couples simplifying their lives, people
are foregoing McMansions for spaces not much big-
ger than a New York City studio apartment. But that
doesn’t mean they’re giving up on McMansion ame-
nities: These little places can be chock full of granite,
tile and hardwood.
A similar trend is taking place in the distribution
market, especially around e-fulfillment. While the
typical DC featured in Modern Materials Handling

Christopher Lane/Getty Images for Peerless Media

mmh.com The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail 45

Automation/Retail

is 500,000 square feet or more, retail-

ers and e-tailers are looking at smaller
footprints to get nearer to their custom-
ers. But, like tricked out tiny houses,
that doesn’t mean they’re giving up on
automation. The truth is, regardless of
the size of the space or company, e-com-
merce fulfillment operates at a different
pace than store replenishment. Even a
small, fast-growing e-tailer has to design
processes and systems that meet today’s
customer service level expectations if it’s
going to do its own distribution.
Case in point: Adore Me Services,
the Secaucus, N.J.,-based distribution
arm of Adore Me, a fast-growing e-com-
merce retailer selling women’s lingerie,
sleepwear, swimwear and activewear. In
2017, the then five-year-old startup set
out to build its first distribution center
to control the customer experience. The
result was a 130,000-square-foot facility
across the Hudson River from the com-
pany’s New York headquarters that packs
a lot of order fulfillment automation in a
comparatively small space.
“We wanted to be as close to New
York as possible, but in a footprint we
could afford and with a system that
could support at least three year’s
growth out of the facility,” says Krutin
Shah, director of distribution. “That’s
where automation came into play.”
The solution designed by the system
integrator (Bastian Solutions,
bastiansolutions.com) fits a high-density
robotic storage and order picking system Merchandise is inspected and prepared for storage in receiving (top) and then sent to
(AutoStore), two automated putwalls the AutoStore for replenishment (bottom).

(OPEX Sure Sort) that can handle about

80% of the facility’s SKUs, a conventional
putwall for the remaining 20% of SKUs,
and conveyor and sortation into an area
about 35,000 square feet in size. The
rest of the facility is dedicated to receiv-
ing, reserve storage, packing and ship-
ping, plus one aisle of flow rack for the
200 fastest-moving SKUs. That area is
directed by pick-to-light and totes coming
from that area are directed to one of the
automated putwalls, the conventional put-
wall or a single line packing area.
While it may be relatively small, the
system manages about 25,000 SKUs
with the addition of 500 to 800 new
SKUs a month and fills an average of
5,000 to 7,000 orders per day. With some
400 cubby locations each, the automated
putwalls can sort up to 2,400 units per
hour compared to about 300 units per
hour in a conventional putwall.

46 The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail mmh.com

 eCommerce Order Fulfillment

From Your Screen to Your Facility

See how Adore Me improved e-fulfillment operations with goods-to-person automation

AutoStore OPEX: Sure Sort Warehouse Execution System

For a complete vision, let our experts guide you through intelligent system design and the
selection of the right automation for your operation.

CONSULTING | ENGINEERING | MANUFACTURING | INTEGRATION | SUPPORT

888.725.3046 www.BastianSolutions.com a TOYOTA ADVANCED LOGISTICS company

Automation/Retail
Totes are delivered to a goods-to-person pick station (top). Items are then transported to the automated putwall, which sorts them
into orders (bottom).
The order fulfillment solution was
designed to grow with Adore Me in two
ways; the organization can add shifts and,
when that is maxed out, there is room to
add to the automation. More importantly,
the new facility allowed Adore Me to up its
customer service game. “We’re now able to
48 The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail
handle our demand and provide the cus-
tomer experience that was designed by ourseven years ago to take on the likes of
marketing teams,” Shah says.
Growing pains
Ranked No. 36 on Crain’s 2018 Fast 50 lion women, predominately urban mil-
list of fastest-growing companies in New lennials, with 80% of its traffic coming
York City, Adore Me was founded about
Victoria’s Secret by a Harvard Business
School MBA student. The company has
a customer base of more than 11 mil-
from mobile devices. While it began as
an e-tailer, Adore Me has added special
services, like an Elite program that ships
a selection of three to five items each
month to participants based on their
preferences, and opened two retail loca-
tions in 2018 with plans to open more
in 2019. In 2017, the last year for which
sales revenues were available, Adore Me
touched $100 million in revenue.
Like many start-ups, order fulfillment
was initially outsourced to a third-party
logistics (3PL) provider. When the com-
pany outgrew the first 3PL’s capacity, it
went with a larger provider. By the end
of 2016, it had outgrown capacity there
as well. “When we left our first 3PL, we
were occupying two aisles of their facil-
ity,” Shah says. “When we left the second,
we were occupying 10 to 12 aisles. We
had also added to our product line, which
added complexity, and we were shipping
to Canada, Australia and the UK.”
More importantly, he adds, the com-
mmh.com
pany’s vision was expanding. In the
early days of the start-up, the focus was
on acquiring new customers. As the
business matured, the focus shifted to
customer retention through a superior
customer experience. New offerings
and retail stores were on the drawing
board. More emphasis was placed on
packaging and presentation. All of those
tweaks to the business model would
have an impact on distribution opera-
tions. “As our business model evolved,
we needed distribution that was flex-
ible,” says Shah. “We didn’t want to
adapt the business timeline to a distri-
bution timeline.”
Things came to a head on Valentine’s
Day 2017, Adore Me’s peak holiday.
“Some customers who placed orders up In addition to the automated putwall, Adore Me Services also uses conventional
to 10 days before Valentine’s Day didn’t putwalls for order consolidation.
receive them until after Valentine’s Day,”
Shah recalls. Soon after, one of the co- Website. The third was the selection and rack storage. What sold the team
founders suggested to the board that it of an integrator with the best design on that combination? “We looked at a
was time for the company to build its to meet Adore Me’s needs. Part of that number of proposals and did a num-
own distribution center. “The idea was was coming up with a design that could ber of site visits,” Shah says. “In the
that if we control our supply chain, we meet Adore Me’s projected needs for at end, we have a reasonably large num-
can control the customer experience, and least three years in a compact facility: ber of SKUs for a facility of this size,
we can control our own destiny,” Shah Getting close to New York City meant plus we’re adding 500 to 800 SKUs a
says. A month later, the team got the go that a 300,000-square-foot distribution month. We needed dense storage to
ahead to build a new DC and a new dis- center was probably out of the question. manage the large number of SKUs,
tribution team (see box, p. 22). That meant automation was going to be and we needed an efficient way to get
important. The last was to build a distri- at SKUs for our order profile.”
Design from the ground up bution team from scratch. The decision to use an automated
Building a greenfield facility gave the “When we started this, our co-found- putwall was the result of looking at the
Adore Me Services team the chance to ers’ strategy was to design a system that best way to sort after batch picking. “The
design a solution without pre-conceived would allow us to start with one shift, traditional way to do that is with a light-
notions or existing systems. The project, and then expand over time to two or directed putwall,” Shah says. “But, most
which kicked off in June 2017, unfolded three shifts,” Shah recalls. “That would of the packages we handle are small
with four big steps. allow us to grow in this location.” While and the average number of items per
The first was site selection: The facil- automation was going to be expensive order is small.” One of the integrators
ity needed to be near the company’s up front, done right, it would reduce the suggested an automated putwall because
New York City headquarters. That led to cost per order compared to working with the technology was originally designed
the New Jersey location across the Hud- a 3PL. “A system was only short-listed if for mail sortation. The manufacturer’s
son River. The second was the selection it could meet that criteria,” Shah says. analysis was that 80% of Adore Me’s
of a warehouse management system Ultimately, the best design was a product could go through that system,
(WMS) that was right for the opera- combination of the robotic order pick- with just 20% going to a traditional light-
tion and integration with the company ing solution, the automated putwalls directed putwall. The catch: The OPEX

mmh.com The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail 49

Automation/Retail

system had never been integrated with

an AutoStore system in the past. “Our
system integrator was confident they
could do the integration,” Shah says. It
was a risk, but one they were willing to
take.
The reserve storage area is a
combination of rack and floor storage.
Product that is likely to go soon to the
robotic order picking solution is stored
on the floor because it’s more efficient to
access and ship it from there. Remaining
product is stored in pallet rack. There is
also one area of flow rack for picking the
200 fastest-moving SKUs.

Going live
The project had a very aggressive time-
line. From the kickoff in the early sum-
mer of 2017, Adore Me Services, the
newly created distribution arm, began
manual pick, pack and ship operations Orders are packed for shipment.

in October 2017, but with a limited

number of orders.
In fact, Adore Me continued to work
with a 3PL until the middle of 2018 to
provide a seamless customer experience
whenever possible. Over the next eight
months, the team integrated the WMS
with the Website and the warehouse
control system and began to build a
team of associates. “The original team
was me, our co-founder, an ex-Amazon
manager and other members of our sup-
ply chain team,” Shah recalls. “Then,
we brought on a software systems
expert, an HR manager, finance and
inventory manager and an individual to
manage safety and loss prevention.”
With key people in place, Adore Me
Services began working with several
temp agencies to add associates into
the mix a handful at a time. “We were
investing in people who would stay with
us and had the potential to be trained
for the next level when we brought in
the automation,” Shah says.
By February of 2018, a team of just
more than 30 associates was in place;
that grew to about 80 over time. Since
then, some have transitioned from temp
to full-time positions on the floor, while
others have been trained to maintain
the automation and operate lift trucks.
The automation went live in March
of 2018, roughly eight months after the
kickoff. Before the summer was out, the
3PL had been phased out. “We could not
have been in a better spot,” Shah says.
“We had our smoothest holiday season in
three years and the fact that we did this
all in a very short period of time gave us
a boost in confidence.”
The full system, including the
automation, has been up and running for
nearly a year as of this story. “We’re still
learning today,” says Shah. In addition
to delivering on Adore Me’s customer
experience, flexibility is an important
benefit of the system. For example,
while the solution was designed for
e-commerce order fulfillment, the
AutoStore picking technology is now
also being used to build mixed item
cartons for store replenishment. Once
a carton is complete, it’s delivered to
a small value-added processing center
where store tickets and RFID tags are
added to get items store ready. And
although returns are negligible now,
Adore Me’s subscription service is
growing in popularity, which will increase
the number of returns that have to be
processed in the future. To that end,
Shah and his team are investigating ways
to use the automation to handle returns.
“When we were with a 3PL, we
didn’t always understand how difficult
it can be to change the distribution
process when we changed the
business model. For a company with
an evolving business model, we now
have a very flexible distribution system
that we can use to our advantage in
the market.” •

50 The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail mmh.com

Pouch and pocket sorters
shake up e-commerce
distribution
With e-fulfillment driving the need for high-rate order consolidation,
pouch/pocket sortation systems address a number
of top e-commerce challenges.

BY JOSH BOND, SENIOR EDITOR

mmh.com The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail 51

Automation/Retail

Caption

D istribution technologies that were ini-

tially built to support retail brick-and-
mortar locations have done an admi-
rable job adapting to the e-commerce
revolution. Direct-to-consumer (D2C) fulfillment has
pushed technology to the limit as end users work to
squeeze every penny, second and square inch from
their facilities. It might come as a surprise, then, that
a 50-year-old technology designed for a very specific
niche could be just what the industry needs.
The volume and complexity of e-commerce order
fulfillment has created the need for solutions that
streamline piece picking, says Ken Ruehrdanz, man-
ager of the distribution systems market for Dematic.
Solutions that store, transport, sort, sequence and
consolidate eaches are in demand. “A pouch system
can accommodate all of those. The pouch system
is now the centerpiece and fulfillment engine for
e-commerce distribution centers,” Ruehrdanz says.
If you’ve never heard of pouch or pocket sortation
systems, don’t worry. Ross Halket, vice president of
intralogistics sales for WRH Global Americas, says
there aren’t many pouch systems in North America yet.
“There are fewer than a dozen that I know of, but
a lot of customers are at the point now where they
were with shuttles a few years ago,” Halket says.
“They’re keeping it close to the chest because they
don’t want competitors to know.”

Pouches make efficient use of overhead space and can be easily routed through a facility’s
nooks and crannies. Well-suited to direct-to-consumer fulfillment and returns, pouches
and pockets reduce touches while increasing responsiveness.

52 The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail mmh.com

 Consolidate in advance
Pouch sortation started in the garment
industry. The simple rail systems densely
stored and singulated premium clothing
on hangers, but they also proved effec-
tive for sorting items into vehicles in
route sequence. The specialized technol-
ogy lingered quietly for decades, serving
primarily the fashion industry. Mean-
while, the retail industry churned ever
closer to omni-channel and D2C capa-
bilities by innovating with conventional
distribution technologies.
According to Dave Simpson, execu-
tive director of ASD sales for SSI
Schaefer Systems International, even
some of the most advanced warehouse
automation has a breaking point.
Demand for higher singulation and
consolidation has only grown, with
warehouses evolving from thousands to
hundreds of thousands of SKUs. Items
Acting as a dynamic wave buffer, pocket sortation systems allow for massive batches and waves, pre-allocating and efficient
order consolidation.
mmh.com
picked throughout the building must
come together for an order.
“In retail you have 50 to 100 items
coming together, then with direct-to-
consumer it’s two or three,” Simpson
says. “Regardless of order size, consoli-
dation became harder and harder in our
industry. You see many sorting solutions
trying to solve for that, like unit sorters,
tilt tray, bomb bay and sliding shoe. For
all of them, the end goal was to take
all inventory picked in the warehouse
and consolidate it into a single order or
group of orders.”
However, these conventional sorta-
tion technologies couldn’t quite do the
job by themselves. Users might add
induction points to try to increase per-
formance, Simpson says, but there’s still
the need to bring items to the induction
area. On the back end, limited desti-
nations led to widespread adoption of
The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail
“after sort” systems like put walls.
“Add 20 locations after sort and you
go from 100 destinations to 2,000, but
that’s a lot of touching going on,” Simp-
son says. “A touch to pick, to induct, to
post-sort, to pack out, just to get an order
consolidated.”
Halket says high-velocity systems typi-
cally have four touches before packout,
and pouch systems cut that in half. The
pouch becomes the put wall right from
the pick face, he says, saving at least two
touches per unit. As an added bonus, any
single-item orders, whether 1% or 15%
of orders, can bypass the entire sort pro-
cess and take a straight rail to packout,
Halket says.
Each touch adds an opportunity
for error. Carousels and put walls that
achieve more than 99.7% accuracy were
good enough for retail, says Rudi Lueg,
senior vice president of sales for Knapp.
53
Automation/Retail
One customer with several pouch mod-
ules, on the other hand, pushed out 500
million items in a day and tallied three
errors. That’s a 0.0000006% error rate.
“For direct-to-consumer, pockets are
one of the few technologies that are
really suitable,” Lueg says. “If inside the
four walls you try to cut costs and throw
bodies at problems, forget about it. One
of our pouch customers is done on Black
Friday at 5 p.m. or 6 p.m., while another
facility could be digging out of Black Fri-
day for another week.”
A buffer above
The benefits of pouch and pocket sys-
tems center around space, capacity and
Pouches become put walls directly from the pick face, which might be staffed by a human, conveyor or cobot.
54 The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail
rate. Ruehrdanz says pouch systems use
overhead space effectively, storing and
buffering in tight, compact rows. The rail
system offers cost-effective accumulation
of lots of inventory. Typical systems range
from 25,000 to 150,000 pouches, Rueh-
rdanz says, and typical throughput ranges
from 2,500 to 12,000 items per hour.
Pick modules and goods-to-person
stations are a good complement to pouch
sortation. The operator—or conveyor or
cobot—can pick for hundreds of orders
at a time. Each pouch only ever holds
one item, which won’t be touched again
until packout. Simpson says large sys-
tems support huge batch picking.
“The problem with batches or waves,
generally, is they are limited in size,”
Simpson says. “Think about picking for
a crossbelt sorter. Wave size can be no
larger than the number of open orders,
so you have to throttle the size of waves.”
Lueg adds that in a conventional wave
of 2,000 items, if you miss five items the
whole wave is stuck. “IT guys love waves,
operations hates waves,” he says. Pouch
sortation works as waveless in a wave
environment, so everyone is happy.
However, if a pouch system has a
three-hour wave capacity, Halket says,
“give it all to me. Don’t parse and ana-
lyze, just give it all and within those
pouches I now have three hours of work
hanging above me.”
mmh.com
 Pouches achieve this performance
by functioning as a buffer at a scale and
efficiency few other sortation systems
can match. The physical infrastructure
for pouch systems is very accommodat-
ing, according to Simpson. He says mul-
tiple levels can be routed around nooks
and crannies in the warehouse with no
physical floor space taken, and because
pouches conform to their contents there
is virtually zero wasted space. Compare
this to the use of a tilt tray carrying a
thumb drive.
One big shuttle or other stor-
age engine can support pick stations
where a person or cobot loads a pouch,
Halket says. Using gravity as much as
possible cuts the need for hundreds of
drives in the air, he adds. This reduces
the already low maintenance pouches
require as an easy-to-clean technology
with fewer components.
“One client used $600 in parts in
two years,” Halket says. “These are very
simple systems compared to the servos
and switches and elements in traditional
sorters and conveyors.”
Dynamic waves
A pouch system’s dynamic wave buffer
enables a high degree of efficiency and
preparedness. Lueg offers the example of
an upcoming sale on red T-shirts. You’re
fairly confident you will sell 10,000, but
certain you will sell at least 5,000. It’s
possible to pre-load the pockets with the
5,000 and if you sell 8,000 when busy
you only need to load 3,000 more.
Suppose promotional efforts create
100 high-speed SKUs, Simpson says.
You can pick each discrete order as it
comes in or do waves in full case incre-
ments. Say 20 units are in a case and
the wave needs six. Induct all 20, and
the six are allocated while 14 go into a
holding pattern.
mmh.com
“Use this dynamic wave buffer with a
select number of SKUs you’re confident
will sell, and as orders come in those
units will be immediately allocated,”
Simpson says. “This is different from a
replenishment model where there are
min/max thresholds and you have paid
someone to go get a case, open it and
make it available for one or two picks.”
Dynamic wave buffers are great not
just for residuals and pre-picking, Simp-
son says, but for returns. Anything des-
ignated as return to stock goes into the
buffer to fill the next order right away.
Krish Nathan, CEO of SDI Sys-
tems, says one pouch customer used
50% of returns within 24 hours. Their
system has hundreds of thousands
of pouches, with a buffer of between
60,000 to 100,000. A business with
40,000 SKUs and a buffer of that
size might pre-load two of each SKU,
Nathan says, simply because they
know they will need them eventually.
As opposed to a shuttle’s tote- or car-
ton-level storage and retrieval, Nathan
says a pouch system’s dynamic buffer is
a unit-level storage and retrieval engine.
“Pouches are a super exciting tech-
nology that now actively tracks every-
thing at the unit level,” Nathan says.
“Because you know where everything is,
you know what you don’t have. A chal-
lenge in most e-commerce operations is
the tail, the things you didn’t pick and
any exceptions. This technology gives
you loads of flexibility to handle excep-
tions because you know what they are.”
For example, in a traditional tilt tray
and put wall environment, packout finds
exceptions. If a picker gets the wrong
size shoe, Nathan says, someone now
has to put the wrong size away and do a
hot pick to get the right one. The result
is that 80% of fulfillment time is spent
dealing with 20% of the orders.
The State of Materials Handling Automation/Retail
“99.99% accuracy is a traditional tar-
get,” Nathan adds, “but in e-commerce
at 20,000 items an hour that’s 20 prob-
lems to solve every hour, which takes an
inordinate amount of time.”
Similarly, if one customer orders
something and then 30 minutes later
orders something else, you have two
orders. Once the first order is released,
it’s too late to modify it. Pouches can
hold and combine the two orders before
releasing them to the packer.
Nathan says pouches further boost
accuracy because their identification,
whether RFID or bar code, is in the
same place every time. Once product
is married to the pouch, scanners and
low-price cameras can be distributed
through the system.
“You can guarantee 100% accuracy
because just before it’s diverted to a
pack station it’s scanned one more
time,” Lueg says. “If something is wrong,
it’s flagged right there. It’s essentially
automated quality assurance for every
pack station.”
Halket highlights pouches’ promise
in the third-party logistics space, where
a pouch system lends itself to whatever
contracts might come. From cell phones
to teddy bears to frying pans, Halket
says it can be done with a combination
of pouch sorter and shuttle.
“These are no-brainers in my mind,”
he says. “People should not only be
looking at pouches, but getting in line to
purchase them. The big ones who have
done their pilots are now greenfielding,
and retrofits are easy because they can
go above anything. The technology is
coming from both angles.”
Traditional brick-and-mortar retail
technology in a D2C environment
impacts productivity, accuracy and flow,
Lueg says. “All those things are beauti-
fully solved with pouches.” •
55