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of each item or carton, and allows order
pickers to verify and ship the oldest one
first.
SUCCESS, AND WHAT’S NEXT
The impact of all these changes has been
remarkable. For example, under the
“switcher” system, it used to take three
to four hours to move loads from one
building to another, and manufacturing
lines would order an entire shift’s worth
of components to ensure they’d always
have what they needed. Now, the transfer
between plant and production line takes as
little as three to 10 minutes. As a result, the
lines can order just the materials they need
when they need them, which has freed up
additional space for manufacturing.
Congestion has been reduced and safety
greatly improved. Before, there were a lot
of forklifts weaving around each other
and moving throughout the plant. With
the AGCs in place, the forklifts only operate in their own zones. And because the
AGCs run on magnetic strips, Buscher
says, pedestrians can see the carts’ exact
travel path. Furthermore, their laser
“bumpers” prevent collisions with pedestrians, vehicles, or other obstacles.
The project achieved ROI in just 14
months, well ahead of the 24-month
mandate. Some of the greatest savings—
in the millions of dollars—came from a
reduction in labor. Overtime is a thing of
the past, as are the switchers and trailers
that shuttled between the factory and the
off-site warehouses. At the DC, less labor
is required at the shipping and receiving
docks, and a number of forklifts across
three shifts have been eliminated. CKNA
emphasizes that employees whose positions were no longer needed were offered
new positions in the DC, in the plant, or
at other company facilities.
That’s not the end of the story, though.
Currently, the three partners are studying
whether the SmartCarts could load and
unload themselves by means of power belt
conveyors mounted on top. CKNA is also
working with Meiji Corp. to put radio-fre-
quency identification (RFID) tags on racks
and shipping containers in order to better
track them. The DC also aims to replace
manual scanning with automatic readers
mounted on the forklifts, allowing bet-
ter tracking of inventory within the
facility and connecting it with the lift
trucks’ movements.
Given its quick ROI, this bold
toss-it-out-and-start-over solution
was bound to attract attention. And
it has: The project received the 2015
Calsonic Kansei CEO’s Award for
the region encompassing North
America, Mexico, and Brazil.
Editor’s note: To see the automatic
guided carts at CKNA’s Lewisburg
plant and DC in action, go to
http://calsonic.com/en/news/article/
distribution-center-lewisburg-tn/.
