R obust growth is a goal for just about every company. That same growth can create chaos, however, if a company is not equipped to accommodate it. When customer demand intensi es, many manufacturing companies struggle to elevate their ful llment operations to keep up with it, whether they face a seasonal or ongoing jump in orders. Not being able to adequately adjust can undermine the rest of their business.
to get through peak 2022 before AutoStore would be implemented,” Sumpter says. Despite some inherent complexities, the AutoStore implementation went according to plan. “Because we were building AutoStore in an area that was covered with racking and conveyors, both of which were integral to our daily process, we faced some signi cant challenges along the way,” Sumpter says. “We are fortunate to have a great team who bought into the future, and they all went the extra mile to keep us on schedule. “Kardex made their part look easy,” he adds. “We went live on August 5, the day we had planned 15 months earlier.” Evident Benefits “Kardex projected we would get through the 2023 holidays with 18 fewer people in the stocking and picking roles and that is exactly what we did,” Sumpter says. “We eliminated our bottlenecks, and we were able to continue to ship product the same day, every day.” Cutter & Buck shipped 13% more units during the 2023 peak season versus the same period in 2022 with shorter lead times and less labor, Hayes says. In particular, for AutoStore’s speci c tasks, labor needs decreased 60% from
Kardex in spring 2022 with a plan to go live with AutoStore in August 2023. Cutter & Buck had increased sales through the web and its brick-and- mortar channels, leading to consistent company growth and increased inventory levels, explains Mitch Hayes, president of Kardex Solutions AutoStore. For the company to accommodate that growth, it needed a strategic shift to automation. Kardex spent time at Cutter & Buck’s ful llment center in Seattle to understand the business and process ows. The apparel manufacturer shared its data from peak season 2021, when the starkest problems had occurred, as well as its ve-year growth plan. Kardex’s help went beyond preparing to implement AutoStore. “They also identi ed some areas we could improve
Manufacturers who feel the pressure of ramped-up demand often turn to third-party providers to transform their ful llment operations. In the following company case studies, ful llment stopped acting as an obstacle to growth and started serving as an integral aid to it. CUTTER & BUCK: Tackling Seasonal Demand Surges Cutter & Buck, a sportswear and golf apparel manufacturer based in Renton, Washington, had a pressing problem. During the 2021 holiday season, the company could not hire enough labor to ship orders within two to three days, even though its goal was to ship all orders the same day they were received. “We had run out of space in our active locations in our three- oor pick module, and we were unable to keep our standard turn times during peak season,” recalls Scott Sumpter, the company’s executive director. The challenge became so severe that Cutter & Buck ew in salespeople to help in the warehouse, and the company’s CEO and CFO pitched in to help pick and ship orders. Cutter & Buck knew it needed to improve its ful llment process, and it sought an automation solution to help. The company turned to Kardex, a Switzerland-based industry partner for intralogistics solutions and a supplier of automated storage solutions and material handling systems. Kardex implemented AutoStore, an automated storage and retrieval system that uses warehouse robots for ful llment. Cutter & Buck signed with
The use of AutoStore reduced Cutter & Buck’s order turn time for direct-to-consumer orders by two days, while labor needs dropped 60%.
162 Inbound Logistics • July 2024
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