DC Velocity - November 2013

out the Bay and Ocean states. “We ship to the smallest VFW, the largest nightclubs, stores, restaurants, and even Fenway Park. If you have a liquor license, we can deliver products to you,” says Epstein.

Horizon Beverage moved to its new 600,000-square-foot temperature-con-trolled facility in Norton, which is 35 miles south of Boston, last year. (The company also has a 100,000-square-foot facility in western Massachusetts.) The new site, from which Horizon ships full pallets, full cases, and mixed cases of beverages, is a far cry from its predecessor. For example, the new building features roller conveyors and a sliding shoe sorter (both from Intelligrated) that now do most of the heavy lifting. Labels and voice picking technology also help boost accuracy.

To design the material handling systems for the new facility, Horizon Beverage turned to Carlstadt, N.J. -based integration firm W&H Systems. “W&H has experience in the wine and spirits [trade], and that is why we chose them,” says Epstein.

Epstein praises W&H for its willingness to work with Horizon to smooth out rough spots in the flow, such as tweaking conveyor inclines and turns to assure gentle transport and minimize the potential for bottle breakage. The integrator also arranged to have the conveyors’ rollers positioned closer together to reduce vibration and jarring, he says.

LIFTING THEIR SPIRITS

Today, distribution is a smooth-running operation at the Norton site. Forklifts whisk full-pallet orders and keg products to the shipping docks, while the remaining items are gathered from seven pick areas. (About 80 percent of the products shipped daily from the DC are selected in case- or less-than-case quantities.)

Six of the selection areas are located in three, two-level pick modules. Here, full cases are selected using printed shipping labels. Each label lists the location where a case is stored within the pick module. The worker assigned to the module pulls a case from that storage slot and manually affixes the shipping label to the carton. He then lifts the case onto a takeaway conveyor that runs through each level of the module.

The seventh pick area, known as “bottle pick,” is designed
for assembling mixed cases of products for customers who
want less-than-full-case quantities of particular stock-keep-
ing units (SKUs). The majority of these items are liquors
and spirits, though a small percentage of wines are also
selected within the bottle pick area. Voice technology from
Lucas Systems directs picking. Workers receive computer-
generated instructions over their headsets, then place the
bottles into mixed-SKU cartons.

Epstein jokes that this is actually the second “pick-by-
voice” system his company has used. In the old facility, a
supervisor would stand at the end of the aisle with a writ-
ten manifest in his hand. He would speak over a hand radio
to workers in the aisles, who would select needed items as
he read them off. “It was like using horses instead of cars,”
Epstein quips in comparing the two “technologies.”
The full cases selected in the six modules combine with
cases coming from the bottle pick area in a seven-to-one
merge. They then enter the sliding shoe sorter. The sorter
has small blocks, known as shoes, that can move across the
conveying surface. When a carton reaches its divert destina-
tion, the software directs the shoes to slide, gently redirect-
ing the case down a divert lane. The sorter at Horizon has
nine divert lanes. Eight of these feed down to outbound
shipping doors.

The ninth sorter divert sends cases through a pop-up sorter to a palletizing area. Once cases go through the initial sorting, wheels in the conveyor surface rise up to direct them to one of four palletizing stations. When a case reaches the assigned station, a computer relays instructions to workers regarding where to place it on a waiting pallet.

The cartons that divert from the sliding shoe sorter to the eight outbound docks are floor loaded onto the company’s fleet of 50 beverage delivery trucks, where they join full pallets brought directly from the storage areas. Horizon also has three tractor-trailer trucks that it uses for longer hauls, some transfers to its western Massachusetts facility, and occasional inbound freight.

BETTER FLOW

All together, the facility ships about 30,000 cases of beverages a day, with 25,000 of them passing through the sorter. The automation has led to higher throughput in the new building compared with Horizon’s previous DC. The gentle handling has also reduced breakage levels. Epstein says that work is now performed at a controlled, steady pace compared to the often-hectic environment in the old building.

“It’s a much more pleasant work environment now, and we can do more in less time,” says Epstein. “We had problems with a lot of errors when we did manual sorting, but the automated sorting takes that away.” ;