BEYOND THE BUILD: Designing the Next Gen Warehouse
How Southern Glazer’s Delivers Cleaner Loads with Less Rework
Dermalogica deployed Corvus One autonomous drones to automate inventory management using AI and computer vision. This system increases warehouse imaging frequency by 600% and saves roughly 120 labor hours per month, reallocating sta to higher-value tasks.
By KARLI SAGE , Vice President, Supply Chain Management, Technology, and Engineering, Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits
Shippers don’t judge you by your dashboards. They judge you by what shows up at their dock. Was the trailer built the right way? Did the right pallets land on the right stops? Did anyone have to chase a short, a swap, or a missing label? At Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits, we operate at national scale with highly dynamic demand, and small gaps get big fast. Some fixes are simple connectivity hacks that keep the floor moving. Others are real tech upgrades that take touches out of the work. Here are 10 tips that help us deliver cleaner loads with less rework. 1. Check the last 10 feet Walk the dock every day. Look for the basics: right stop order, clear labels, solid pallets, and a trailer that matches how the customer will unload it. 2. Fix WiFi before you x anything else If the network drops or scanners lag, people will work around the system. Get coverage right, keep spare devices charged, and make scanning the normal way to work.
of the more manual operations, he adds. Because walking is greatly reduced, they’re able to concentrate on the task at hand. The new system supports Sonepar’s strategic vision for market growth, while allowing for it in a scalable way, Healey says. Sonepar can add capabilities, such as carton building or additional conveyance, as the market demands. DERMALOGICA SMOOTHS OUT INVENTORY Until recently, taking inventory within the 80,000-square-foot warehouse for Dermalogica, a provider of custom skin care solutions, had been a manual, often time-consuming process. Each workday, an employee would count roughly 200 to 300 of the 6,000 rack locations. “We would start at one end of the warehouse and work our way all the way through until we got to the other end, and then start over,” says Jason Brown, director of U.S. logistics. The process took about six weeks. Occasionally, items weren’t in the right location, creating extra work as employees searched for them. “If it was critical, we would deploy the whole warehouse to nd a particular product so that we didn’t miss a sale,” Brown says. To address these challenges, Dermalogica now deploys a Corvus drone. The cycle counting process, which used to take an employee 40 hours per week, now requires just two to three hours per day, Brown says. The drone also provides an updated occupancy report every week, which helps in planning. If large loads are arriving, Brown and his team know whether they can accept them or whether they need to hold or divert them. Drones can also enhance safety, as they reduce the need for employees to go up on material handling equipment to check inventory.
3. Build safety into the process Safe buildings run better. Set up the work so people don’t have to rush, overreach, or guess, and use the right equipment to take strain out of the job. 4. Clean up your data Make sure case pack, cube/weight, units of measure, and locations are right, and put one owner on keeping them that way. Bad data shows up fast as bad picks and bad loads.
5. Make exceptions simple Shorts, damage, and mis-picks happen. What matters is having one clear way to flag it, assign an owner, fix it fast, and let the customer know. 6. Automate the pain points Start with the work that creates the most fatigue or rework. That might be label print-and-apply, stretch wrap, robotics for long travel, or decision support that releases the right work at the right time. The goal is fewer touches and fewer chances to get it wrong. 7. Bring the frontline in early The people doing the work will spot issues fast. Pull them in early and you’ll get a better design and fewer workarounds later. 8. Run the dock to a plan Get appointments, staging, trailers, and labor lined up. If you can see what’s coming and what’s late, you can fix problems before they pile up. 9. Standardize handos Decide what “good” looks like when work moves from warehouse to yard to transportation, and use the same standard everywhere. Consistency makes training easier and troubleshooting faster, and it keeps you from relying on tribal knowledge. 10. Protect the customer promise Be clear on what “great” means for your operation: accuracy, consistency, and on-time. Then build the day-to-day process to protect it when volume spikes. Do these well and you’ll ship cleaner loads, cut rework, and earn trust with every delivery.
36 Inbound Logistics • May 2026
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