in Torrance, Calif., that distributed footwear, another in
nearby Carson that handled apparel, and a contract facility
in Ohio that filled e-commerce orders. We should also note
that Puma distributes through retail and wholesale channels as well.
While this arrangement worked for a time, it also had
its drawbacks. For instance, there were occasions when an
e-commerce customer would receive three separate shipments for one order. The setup also required a lot of labor
and overhead to staff three facilities.
Another issue was that, as a result of rising e-commerce
volumes, the company was fast outgrowing the network’s
fulfillment capabilities. The crunch was especially pronounced during the December holiday season, when Puma
does 20 percent of its annual e-com business.
“Our e-commerce channel was growing so fast that we
wanted to take it in-house,” says Nicole Barrasso, senior
director, strategic supply chain initiatives. She notes that
e-commerce is a very different animal from the company’s
other channels. “Instead of 10 orders of 1,000, it means
distributing 1,000 orders of one,” she says.
In 2016, the company decided to consolidate all of its
distribution operations at the Torrance DC. As it happened,
the tenant in the other half of the facility was not renewing its lease, which allowed Puma to take over the entire
670,000-square-foot building. Acquiring that space opened
up all kinds of possibilities for Puma and the third party
it contracted to run the facility—Brookvale International,
a division of California Cartage Co. Among other things,
Brookvale would be able to bring distribution for Puma’s
footwear, apparel, and accessories under one roof, while
serving all three channels—e-commerce, retail, and wholesale—from a shared inventory.
To equip the building, Puma turned to systems integrator Bastian Solutions. Puma had worked with Bastian in
the past and was confident the supplier would be able to
provide solid solutions to fit its needs. Bastian actually proposed four automation designs, with Puma choosing one
centered on the AutoStore automated storage and picking
system.
SECURE STORAGE
The AutoStore technology hails from Norway but has had
a number of successful installations in the U.S. It provides
high-density storage using stacked bins arrayed in a grid.
Robots ride on rails along the tops of the stacks, retrieving
bins as needed for delivery to goods-to-person fulfillment
stations.
Puma’s AutoStore occupies only 50,000 square feet
(115,000 square feet, if you include inbound and outbound
conveyors). Despite that small footprint, the AutoStore
system can hold 4 million products, including half a million
shoes. Products are housed in 171,000 bins that are stacked
16 high, with 170 robots to service them.
Puma can fit all of its sports accessories, apparel, and
golf accessories, as well as shoes for e-commerce orders,
into the AutoStore, according to Barrasso. And the benefits
don’t stop there. “We have experienced labor savings, and
it has changed our e-commerce throughput overnight,” she
reports.
In order to realize the automated system’s full potential,
Puma also upgraded the facility’s warehouse manage-
ment system (WMS) at the time of the expansion. Puma
and Bastian worked with software developer Manhattan
Associates Inc. for the upgrade, which ties directly into
Bastian’s “exacta” brand warehouse control system (WCS),
which coordinates the material handling systems.
Because of the facility’s location in California, the
AutoStore was engineered to meet strict seismic requirements. “If there is an earthquake, the best place to sit is
inside the AutoStore. We put a lot into that planning,”
Barrasso says. “We had great partners working with Bastian
and Manhattan for the systems. It all worked as planned, so
now we are just trying to make it even better and faster.”
THE GAME IS AFOOT
Operations in the facility begin in receiving, where cartons
of inbound items are loaded onto conveyors and scanned.
Based on those scans, the WCS determines whether they
should be diverted to the left for the reserve storage area
or right for the AutoStore system. Most of the shoes and
larger items, as well as products not immediately needed for
the AutoStore, are sent to reserve storage, where up to 1. 5
million units are stored in racks.
Whether they arrive directly from receiving or as replenishments from the reserve racks, products entering the
AutoStore are assigned to one of six inbound stations for
induction into the system. An associate opens the cartons
and scans the items. The scan initiates the delivery of
AutoStore bins to the station.
Most of the bins hold a single stock-keeping unit (SKU),
though 20,000 of the bins have storage slots separated by
dividers to accommodate multiple SKUs. A display screen
provides directions to workers on which products go where
in the container. Once a bin is complete, it is automatically
returned to the AutoStore. In all, about 30,000 different
SKUs reside in the system.
As orders arrive for the day’s processing, the WMS sends
them to the WCS that manages order fulfillment activities.
The WCS batches the orders into waves to optimize the
