Prominent Department Store

The clean, bright spaces at this client's Department Stores reflect their ongoing commitment to family, value and national brands.

Client is a family-focused, value-oriented specialty department store offering moderately priced, exclusive and national brand apparel, shoes, accessories, beauty and home products in an exciting shopping environment. This client operates 1,127 stores in 49 states out of their 9 distribution centers — each well positioned to serve their broad national presence. So how does a company get more out of their operation? How can a bustling, dynamic retailer upgrade systems without impacting superior service levels?

Challenge

Over a decade after Daifuku Intralogistics America installed a material handling system in one of their distribution centers, the client was ready for a full-scale system upgrade. Aiming to speed order fulfillment in one of its key markets on the east coast, they wanted to upgrade, replace or rebuild their material handling systems, improve productivity and throughput, and manage their ever-increasing volume demands — all with minimal disruption to operations.

Client turned to Daifuku Intralogistics America to meet this space utilization and throughput challenge.

Solution

Floor space comes at a premium in any distribution center, and this DC is no exception. In order to accommodate shipments to additional retail stores, Client needed more floor space to expand their shipping department. Daifuku Intralogistics America addressed this issue by reducing the footprint of their receiving department through automation. By avoiding relocation or having to add on to the existing facility, the client was able to realize significant cost savings.

Daifuku Intralogistics America also increased productivity by adding four new put-to-light modules. The fourteen existing put-to-light modules were expanded and received upgrades to the latest put-to-light technology. Daifuku Intralogistics America also added a higher capacity multi-belt sorter to handle the increased throughput.

The existing sliding shoe shipping sorter received a cost-saving face-lift. which helped keep the current system up and running throughout the entire system upgrade. A brand new sliding shoe sorter was also part of the shipping system overhaul.

In the end, client experienced a very low amount of downtime during system replacement — 10 days of downtime over the course of 9 months.

Outcome

By partnering with a material handling solutions provider who shared its long-held belief that great customer service guarantees repeat customers, client didn’t miss a beat through the full-scale upgrading of their facility — without adding to their distribution center footprint. Now Daifuku Intralogistics America is designing another retrofit for clients Ohio facility.