Fashion retailer, USA: Goods-to-person shuttle system

CycloneCarrier enables density, performance and operational flexibility to adapt to changes.

Fashion Retail Video Case Study

Fashion retailer uses Swisslog CycloneCarrier to increase storage density and enable higher throughputs

With the number of retail stores growing and continued expansion of products sold through the retail channel, this international fashion retailer faced a capacity squeeze in its main store replenishment distribution center. The short-term solution was to shift some low density product to alternate sites, but a longer term solution was required.

To support the company’s throughput and storage needs, Swisslog configured a four-aisle, 16-level CycloneCarrier system with inbound and outbound elevators on each aisle. The system stores approximately 50,000 totes and is connected to the goods-to-person picking center located on the warehouse mezzanine by a 7,000-foot conveyor system.

The picking center was designed with four looped aisles with the ability to support 11 pick stations per aisle. The pick stations are designed to enable pickers to work on 15 stores simultaneously and each station can support up to eight totes in buffer.

The entire system is controlled by Swisslog’s SynQ software, which is integrated with the customer’s ERP system.

Replenishment requirements aren’t evenly balanced across all of our stores, so the challenge becomes how do you balance work across all of your pickers so one isn’t backlogged while another is idle? A key feature of the software is its ability to dynamically route totes to balance workloads across pickers and maintain consistent productivity.

We worked with Swisslog to implement dynamic routing of totes to evenly distribute work across all available pickers. The system is able to recognize what pickers need work and dynamically re-route totes to that picker before they become idle to enable consistent levels of productivity.

Director of Supply Chain Engineering and Facility Services, International Fashion Retailer