inbound
Latest “Move It!” episode offers inside
look at nation’s most famous DC
Yoox Group mixes it up
Have you ever wished you could show friends and family what you do
every day? You can’t bring them to work with you, but there is another
way to demonstrate what logistics and warehousing are all about: Invite
them to watch the latest edition of “Move It!”
“Move It!” tells the story of logis-
tics in a series of 30-minute shows,
each containing several informative
video segments. The program,
In the latest episode, released in January, our own Dave Maloney tours
the famed Walgreens distribution center in Anderson, S.C., where sophis-
ticated technology allows disabled and nondisabled employees to work
side by side. Dave also looks at how Old Dominion Freight Line handles
fast-moving less-than-truckload shipments at one of its regional hubs,
visits “America’s front door”—the Port of New York & New Jersey, and
discovers how robots help facilitate the movement of auto parts.
To watch the new episode as well as the “Move It!” pilot program, go
to www.moveitshow.com. ;
Celebrate the season with
pallet-recycling projects
PHOTOS COURTES Y OF PREMIER HANDLING SOLUTIONS
Winter isn’t over yet, and there’s still
plenty of time to ski, ice skate, and
go sledding. If you work in a warehouse or DC, you can indulge in this
last activity very economically
indeed—according to the folks at
Premier Handling Solutions.
An entry in the material handling
equipment distributor’s blog shows
how to make a sled from an old
wooden pallet. Captioned photos
( www.premierhandling.com/latest-news/how-to-make-a-sled-out-of-wood-pallets/) walk viewers through
construction step by step. The small
but sturdy sled does work, as the
snow-covered gentleman in one of
the photos could no doubt attest.
That’s not the only seasonal pallet-recycling project on the website,
though. Randy Teadt, the blog’s clever and prolific author, also demonstrates how to make Christmas tree and Thanksgiving turkey lawn
ornaments. ;
We were catching up on our recreational
reading recently when we came across a
photo of material handling equipment
in a most unlikely place: the pages of The
New Yorker. In the photo, packages speed
along belt conveyors and slide down a
sortation chute to a packing station,
while roller-bed conveyors snake around
the order packer. A gleaming, silver and
black automated storage and retrieval
system looms over it all.
What was material handling equipment doing in the pages of the
renowned literary weekly? The accompanying article detailed the genesis and
rise of the high-fashion e-tailer Yoox
Group, based in Milan, Italy. Most of the
article was about founder and CEO
Federico Marchetti and Yoox Group’s
business model, but author John
Seabrook also described the company’s
role as the fulfillment arm for such fashion houses as Armani and Dolce &
Gabbana. Yoox Group handles order
processing, fulfillment, logistics, customs clearance, returns, and customer
service for its own as well as its 30-plus
clients’ online business.
The photo was taken inside the company’s 400,000-square-foot main distribution center in Bologna, Italy. According to
the article, Yoox ships some 2 million
orders annually, and at any one time, the
DC holds more than 3. 5 million individual items—possibly “the world’s biggest
closet,” as Seabrook put it. Pieces of clothing tagged with RFID chips linked to bar-coded product information are folded
and placed randomly in plastic bins for
putaway, with different types of clothing
and accessories mixed together. The random assortment in each bin allows order
pickers to instantly identify which item to
remove, Seabrook writes. If there’s just
one sweater in the bin, for example,
there’s no need to search through a pile of
sweaters for the right size, color, or style.
The result: faster throughput in a high-velocity environment. ;
