tion division manager. “Customers would often
order products that required shipping from
several facilities, so they would receive multiple
shipments. This was costly as well as inconvenient for our customers. We needed to improve
shipping and efficiency.”
BIG VOLUME, SMALL FOOTPRINT
To streamline its distribution process, FANCL
decided to close the eight existing DCs and consolidate operations at a single distribution center
located in Chiba prefecture, which lies in the
Kanto region of Japan’s main island. The new
facility, known as the Kanto Logistics Center,
is owned and operated by third-party logistics
company Hitachi Transport System. FANCL’s
operation occupies three floors of the six-story
building, which has a footprint of just 177,605
square feet. The client has six of its own employees on site.
In addition to boosting efficiency, FANCL’s
goals for the project included reducing its overall
labor requirements and costs, while improving customer service and quality. Among other
things, that meant abandoning the paper-based
picking process used at the previous DCs in favor
of automated fulfillment. “With our increasing
volumes and wider product ranges, we felt we
needed to automate things,” says Nakazawa.
To design the material handling system for
the new DC, FANCL turned to Daifuku Co. Ltd.
After evaluating its client’s requirements, which
included engineering a system that could handle FANCL’s
full and eclectic range of products, Daifuku came back with
a design that incorporates automated storage equipment,
conveyors, sorters, pick-to-light systems, and radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology, all controlled by a
warehouse management system (WMS) owned by FANCL.
Today, the company supplies about 2,300 different products from the Kanto DC, including cosmetics, nutritional
supplements, brown rice, and kale juice. In all, the facility
processes more than 15,000 cases of products daily, shipping goods to 205 of FANCL’s own retail stores, to 250
retail partners, and directly to consumers. Over 90 percent
of orders ship the same day they’re received.
Receiving takes place in the morning at first-floor docks.
Products arrive on plastic pallets or in plastic containers,
which are color coded according to the manufacturing
site. Once they’re emptied, the pallets and containers are
returned to the factories for restocking, and the color cod-
ing makes them easy to sort.
Forklifts supplied by UniCarriers unload pallets of
inbound goods from trailers. Two large material lifts then
raise the pallets to the fourth level of the building, where
some items are stored in pallet racks. UniCarriers forklifts
are also used on this floor to put away goods as well as
retrieve pallets to replenish picking areas.
Individual totes are conveyed to a miniload automated
storage and retrieval system (AS/RS) that is used to replenish picking areas. However, if the product they contain is
needed immediately, the totes can be sent directly to picking zones.
BEAUTY IN MOTION
Under the new system, order fulfillment is both swift and
efficient. As consumers place orders (which they can do
online or by phone), the orders are forwarded to the DC for
processing. On average, 17,000 packages are shipped from
the facility daily, with the volume peaking at 26,000 in the
days following the release of a new catalog, which happens
around the 20th of each month. Orders received by the
Kanto facility before 6 p.m. can be shipped the same day.
As orders are received, packing lists and shipping labels
are printed up and placed in a tote that will be used to
gather items for the order. These order picking totes are
half-blue and half-yellow, making them easy to distinguish
from the source product totes, which are half-orange and
half-yellow. Although the packing list rides along in the tote
with the order, it is not used as a guide for picking.
Each tote also contains an RFID tag—in total, the facility
uses more than 14,000 totes with RFID tags systemwide.
Using a handheld reader, a worker scans the tag on the tote
along with the shipping label and packing slip to marry all
of the documentation to that tote. More than 150 RFID
readers are scattered throughout the building to read the
tags as totes progress through the facility.
The average order contains seven items, each of which
may be stored in a different picking area (the facility has
three picking areas, which are labeled A, B, and C). The
WMS determines the picking sequence and the location of
the ordered items in the picking zones, giving precedence to
the items with the earliest expiration dates. Because many
of the products have limited shelf lives, the facility practices
strict first-in, first-out inventory management.
