DC Velocity - April 2016

38 DC VELOCITY APRIL 2016 www.dcvelocity.com push the confirmation button and the shipping containers continue along on a conveyor.

The delivery containers from the
frozen picking area then pass to a
packing area, where workers remove
the bag liners and the items they
contain, and then transfer them to
thermo boxes with foil exteriors.
Once the boxes reach the delivery
center, items inside will be removed
and packed into Styrofoam contain-
ers for home delivery. Refrigerated
and fresh products, which are
packed in the foam delivery contain-
ers at the warehouse, are delivered
to an automatic stacker that places them
in two rows up to 10-high on wheeled
pallets. The pallets are then rolled direct-
ly into trucks destined for the delivery
centers.

FAST AND FRESH

Fresh fruits and vegetables are also handled in the cold storage DC. Farmers pick fresh produce in the morning and ship it to the fresh produce processing area on the first floor, where it is washed, trimmed, and prepared by teams of workers. The fruits and vegetables— sometimes in very small quantities, such as a handful of tangerines or one-half of a dai-kon radish—are placed into plastic bags. These are put into plastic containers, which in turn are loaded into miniload storage containers. The goods then head to the refrigerated miniload, where they wait until they are picked for orders later that day.

All of the orders from the DC ship to the 25 delivery centers on either freezer or refrigerated trucks. The facility ships 220,000 containers daily from its 19 outbound docks; about 70,000 of those containers hold frozen goods. Once at the delivery centers, the containers will be sorted by delivery route and loaded onto delivery trucks. Customers receive deliveries once a week.

The new automated handling systems at CO-OP now provide fast fulfillment with a very high degree of accuracy. They also allow the cooperative to handle much greater capacity. “With our recent addition of the eye-navi and other systems, our productivity has increased and we are very happy with the results,” says Mitsubishi Shokuhin’s Tanaka. “This center has a much higher throughput than other centers,” he adds.

As home delivery of groceries continues to grow in popularity in Japan, CO-OP will be ready to grow along with it. Even with the efficient new equipment, business volume is growing so fast that the distribution center plans to add one more picking line and expand the AS/RS this year.