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With such a loyal following, leaders of the Exchange knew
their revamped e-commerce operation had to be ready to
handle a surge of orders from the first day the expanded
eligibility requirements took effect.
“We spent the last year and a
half making changes in our DCs
to handle the increase in e-commerce. Among other things, we
revamped our systems and carved
out space for a consolidation
area, a pack station, and a shipping area,” said Alan French, the
Exchange’s vice president of logistics operations.
The updates affected the
Exchange’s three main U.S. DCs:
the 1. 4 million-square-foot Dan
Daniel Distribution Center in Newport News, Va.; the
707,000-square-foot Waco Distribution Center in Texas;
and the 849,000-square-foot West Coast Distribution
Center outside Sacramento, Calif., along with its satellite facility, a 240,000-square-foot building at the nearby
Sharpe Army Depot.
To obtain the capabilities it needed, the operation
embarked on a project to upgrade its WMS software plat-
form to JDA’s WMS 2013.2 product. The Exchange has
now installed the system in its West Coast and Waco facil-
ities as well as a new distribution center in Germany. It is
currently working to roll out the new WMS at its flagship
DC in Newport News, according
to JDA.
As a result of the upgrades, the
three facilities are now the most
efficient of the 11 DCs operated by AAFES, according to the
Exchange. That efficiency is the
result of new processes enabled
by the WMS. For instance, unlike
the legacy system, which assigned
employees to jobs based on static warehouse functions, the new
software lists the tasks each worker can perform, then sets a priority for each task, compares
that with a worker’s proximity to the task location, and
assigns jobs accordingly. The result is a more effective work
flow because the system directs the closest and best-quali-fied workers to the tasks that are most pressing at any given
moment, according to the Exchange.
At the same time, the software has pulled back the curtain on the fulfillment process, giving customers greater
visibility into the status of their orders. With the previous
platform, customers couldn’t obtain updates until the DC
shipped the merchandise. But now, thanks to the implementation of a warehouse order management system
(WOM), they’re able to see the status of each order as it
makes its way through the DC.
Modernizing the WMS allowed the Exchange to make
other technology updates as well, including the addition of
a Vocollect voice-directed picking system from Honeywell
Intelligrated. The Exchange also worked with Honeywell
Intelligrated to install advanced conveyors and a put-to-light wall in its Newport News site, according to Honeywell.
Honeywell Intelligrated had previously worked with the
Exchange to replace the aging conveyor system in its Waco
DC with a faster, higher-capacity version, Honeywell said.
That new, wider accumulation conveyor at Waco also features upgraded controls that replaced dated mechanical
sensors with electric sensors and servo drives, as well as a
sliding shoe sorter and upgraded pick modules.
The Exchange is confident these and other technology
updates will allow it to accommodate the increase in online
order volume. For example, the Dan Daniel DC is now
equipped with a carousel retrieval system from Kardex
Remstar that provides high-density storage, using flat trays
to handle small items, said Morgan Meeks, the Exchange’s
vice president of transportation. (To view clips of the
automated equipment in action, go to https://vimeo.com/
album/4996919.)
