DC Velocity - December 2012

and landscaping, the facility and grounds in 2010 earned LEED Platinum status, an achievement claimed by fewer than 300 facilities worldwide. (See sidebar, “OWC’s DC goes Platinum.”)

OWC is deeply committed to the environment, but it hasn’t sacrificed speed or efficiency in its distribution center in order to achieve its green goals. Quite the opposite, in fact: OWC’s focus on green principles is helping it run a more efficient, cost-effective operation.

“OLD SCHOOL” MEETS NEW DESIGN

Other World Computing sells a wide range of data storage devices, solid-state drives, and memory upgrade solutions (mostly assembled and packaged in house); accessories for Macintosh computers; and accessories for iPads and iPhones. Most orders come from consumers and small businesses, but OWC also sells to selected retailers and third-party vendors. More than 90 percent of the orders filled at the Woodstock DC contain an item that was packaged and/or assembled on site.

The Woodstock DC ships nearly half a million orders annually. Most are small, and many consist of just one or

two items. OWC aims for same-day shipping and real-time order fulfillment whenever possible, a goal it has achieved for the vast majority of the assemblies and other products it sells. Orders are batch-processed every 20 minutes, so “there’s a very high likelihood that an order will be picked and shipped within 40 to 50 minutes,” O’Connor says. Customers frequently take advantage of OWC’s Priority Expedited Service, which provides next-day, early morning delivery to many markets for orders placed by 10: 30 p.m. Central time. (OWC recently opened a second distribution center in the Southwest to better serve customers in that region and on the West Coast.)

The company is a heavy user of express parcel services, primarily the U.S. Postal Service, FedEx, UPS, and DHL. Volume is great enough that the DC fills an average of 10 to 15 standard 4- by 4- by 4-foot containers daily; during the holiday season, it may ship out 50 containers a day.

A few years ago, order volumes threatened to exceed the still-new facility’s capacity. OWC needed to increase capacity but didn’t want to leave its energy-efficient DC or add another building. After considering several proposed material handling systems, the online retailer chose a solution developed by Grand Rapids, Mich.-based Dematic that has doubled the DC’s order throughput capacity in the same space—without compromising OWC’s service standards or environmental principles.

The picking, packing, and shipping process used today combines paper pick tickets with bar codes, optical scanning, energy-efficient conveyors, and a labor-saving sortation system. O’Connor calls it “a very efficient combination of old school and new” approaches to order fulfillment.

The picking process is directed by the facility’s warehouse management system (WMS), which includes a pick-priori-tization system that presorts the discrete orders and prints bar-coded pick tickets in the correct sequence based on item location and order class: singles/pairs of collocated items, or multi-item orders. In each batch, pickers select the small, high-flow orders and then go back for multi-piece orders. Each item is labeled with a unique bar code reflecting its serial number, a practice that has resulted in a fulfillment accuracy rate of 99.99 percent.

The majority of the items OWC sells are small in size, and most orders consist of between one and five pieces. Each order is picked into its own container: a small, plastic tote for the larger, multi-item orders, and a vinyl envelope for many of the small orders. “This allows for very compact picking lanes and bin locations, with like or commonly picked items located close or adjacent to each other,” O’Connor says.