“Our biggest challenge is that while we receive product by the case, we have to turn around and package it
and put it into small boxes so that it can survive the
transit to the customer’s house. So from that perspective, it’s a lot more challenging than traditional distribution,” notes Smith.
PHOTO COURTES Y OF IHERB. COM
THE AUTOMATED ROUTE
iHerb was launched 14 years ago as an Internet-only
health product retailer. The Moreno Valley DC, which
opened in October 2010, is the third building it has used
but the first to be automated—the previous two were
manual operations. The new
320,000-square-foot climate-controlled building gives iHerb
room to spread out. The company originally occupied half the
building, but within three
months, it had moved into the
remaining portion as it expanded its SKU depth to accommodate its growing business.
The automated system,
designed and integrated by
Dematic, has made possible
this broad reach and speedy
order fulfillment. On top of
that, it is engineered to provide
the flexibility to handle a wide
range of product sizes and to
accommodate growth and
expansion down the road.
The system also helps iHerb
track its products within the
building. Because many of the retailer’s nutritional
items are ingested, it must maintain strict control over
them, knowing where each item is at any time.
As products enter the building, 100 percent pass
through quality control and inspection. Lots and expiration dates are recorded, as many of these will have to
be supplied with the customs information for international shipments. Products are then staged for put-away, with a voice system directing their placement
within the pallet storage racks. The voice system was
designed by Dematic, using Vocollect hardware and
software of Dematic’s own design.
Approximately 99 percent of the order picking is
done in batches within a three-level module and a
small shelving area that together provide over 45,000
pick locations. The batching is directed using voice.
The remaining 1 percent of picks are mostly non-conveyable items selected directly from storage.
Products for batch picking are first brought from the
reserve racks to replenish case and pallet flow racks
that contain faster-moving items within the modules,
as well as the floor-level shelving that holds slower
movers.
Dematic’s Pick Director software works in tandem
with iHerb’s homegrown warehouse management system to
organize orders into batches.
The software then directs workers wearing headsets to select
the quantity needed for a batch.
For instance, if 30 customers
each order a bottle of calcium
tablets, then 30 bottles will be
pulled at the same time and
placed into a batch tote. The
items will be allocated to individual orders later in the
process.
PICK, PACK, REPEAT
Once the batch totes have been
filled within the pick module,
workers place them onto takeaway conveyors. Elsewhere in
the facility, associates gather
slow-moving items from the
shelves and deposit them into totes sitting on wheeled
carts. Voice directs this operation as well. When the
tote is full, the worker is instructed to wheel the cart to
an induction location on the conveyor line and deposit
the tote onto a conveyor. There, the totes are merged
with totes coming from the pick module and conveyed
to put stations, where steerable wheels pop up to divert
the batch totes to their assigned stations based on
order profile.
At the put stations, items from the totes are divided up
for individual orders. The put stations themselves are
arranged as shelving walls on either side that run per-
