Cutter & Buck
Location: Renton, WA
Size: 170,000 total square feet, including fulfillment center and embroidery production
Products handled: Lifestyle and activewear apparel
Number of SKUs: 19,000
Employees: 160 on average
Shifts: Two shifts, five days a week
Cutter & Buck, a supplier of activewear and sports apparel, including customized apparel with logos or other decoration work, uses a network of three DCs to service North America. It partners with UPS Supply Chain for a facility that services the Midwest and East, operates a DC in Toronto for the Canadian market, and has its main fulfillment center in Renton, Wash., to service the Western U.S. market, and to produce and ship customized apparel orders.
The project in Renton did not add square footage to the building, but by implementing a high-density, robotic automated storage and retrieval (AS/RS) system, the operation has gained useable space for more inventory while reducing the labor requirement in order picking, which has helped redeploy staff to the production department.
Goods typically arrive at Renton’s receiving docks (1) as floor-loaded cartons, though some goods arrive palletized. Once received, some goods may be brought to a reserve storage position (2), or in some instances, cartons might head directly to the AutoStore AS/RS (3) if they need to be inducted immediately. The majority of goods are bagged apparel items that can easily fit into the AutoStore’s bins.
The high-density AS/RS has more pick locations compared to a legacy, multi-level pick module it replaced. New very narrow aisle (VNA) racked storage (4) now stands where the pick module once stood, allowing more reserve storage capacity. The picking of cartons to replenish the AutoStore is done using orderpicker trucks, with the goods brought to a staging area near the two ports of the AutoStore dedicated to replenishment.
The AutoStore processes direct-to-consumer and store replenishment orders by picking items directly into shipping cartons, which are erected, packed, taped and labeled by associates working the AutoStore ports.
Once picked and packed, the completed shipping cartons are easily pushed onto a conveyor by the picker and automatically routed to the correct shipping lane near the shipping docks (9).
The AS/RS also picks “blank” goods needed in the embroidery/decoration department (6), using a few dedicated ports of the AutoStore, picking the blank items into totes. Each tote has a label applied that designates which embroidery machine this completed tote will be needed at.
When the totes are ready, they are brought by cart to the correct work in process (WIP) staging point (5). This new staging area holds about four hours of WIP for each machine.
The new automation and faster picking processes have allowed the DC to convert a longer-term WIP storage area on a mezzanine level to a general-purpose storage location (7) for miscellaneous items, right above the DC’s value-added services area (8).
The facility has been adding more embroidery machines to keep up with demand for customized apparel. When orders are complete in embroidery and decoration, they are manually packed and labeled in embroidery, and then brought by cart or lift truck to shipping.
System suppliers
- Systems Integration: Kardex
- High-Density AS/RS: AutoStore
- Warehouse Execution System: Kardex
- Warehouse Management System: Manhattan Associates
- Integration of Software: SVT Robotics
- Bar Code Printers: Zebra Technologies
- Lift Trucks/Order Pickers: Crown Equipment Corp.
- Rack: Heartland Steel Products (SpaceRak brand), installed by NorthWest Handling
Article topics
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