AS A SUPPLIER OF PRECISION GAUGES FOR MECHANical and industrial engineering applications, Engineered
Specialty Products Inc. (ESP) takes customer service seriously. It has to: ESP’s customers, which are mainly in the
oil and gas industry, rely on its products to make critical
temperature and pressure measurements.
So when the Kennesaw, Georgia-based company adopted
PathGuide Technologies Inc.’s Latitude warehouse man-
agement system (WMS) in 2016, the first order of business
for Operations and Technology Manager Tony Moore
was to tighten up its order-fulfillment process. ESP serves
its customers from a single 40,000-square-foot facility in
Kennesaw, where workers process about 1 million units a
month, split evenly between inbound and outbound ship-
ments. At the time, the site was struggling with inefficien-
cies in its picking and shipping operations that had led to
an average order-to-ship time of seven days.
Moore’s decision paid off: By using the metrics generated
by the WMS to streamline warehouse processes, ESP was
able to slash its average ship time to less than one day.
WMS helps gauge maker handle
DC performance pressures
Engineered Specialty Products Inc. used data
from the Latitude WMS to tie pay to performance and drive labor improvements.
and the Mountain View Foods facility has had no recorded
accidents since it opened in 2014, they note. The system’s
design helps keep things safe. In a traditional dairy, workers
would have to use long-handled hooks to pull 250-pound
stacks of dairy cases onto a chain conveyor—a process
that presents a high risk of worker injury. According to
Cimcorp, MultiPick’s end-to-end automated system, with
its nontraditional conveyor belt design, eliminates those
challenges. It also allows the facility to run 24/7, increasing
productivity. Today, orders are picked with 100% accuracy
at faster speeds, which results in shorter leadtimes, fresher
products, and maximized product shelf life, leaders at both
companies report.
“Because of the level of automation, it takes far fewer people to run the Mountain View Foods facility than [it does
to run] a traditional dairy,” a Cimcorp spokesperson says.
“Visitors often ask, ‘Where are all the people?’ The plant
currently employs a staff of 115, with only about 30 people required per shift to cover all 215,000 square feet of the plant.”
Sustainability is a key benefit as well, in line with Kroger’s
efforts to become a zero-waste company, an initiative it
launched in 2017. The automated system at Mountain View
Foods is helping to meet that goal in a number of ways.
According to Cimcorp, robotic picking and palletizing can
be performed as a nearly “lights out” operation because
human involvement is only required to monitor system
performance. As a result, Kroger has been able to reduce
energy usage per unit by 3% each year.
The system is also helping to conserve water by limiting
employee movement throughout the plant. Employees
must follow a specific hygiene protocol to avoid product
contamination when entering different parts of the plant.
Less employee movement means less water used in that
process. Together, Kroger’s production plants, including Mountain View Foods, have reduced the company’s
yearly water use by 61 million gallons—the equivalent of
the amount of water used annually by roughly 1,500 U.S.
homes, the companies say.
Cimcorp leaders say the Denver plant’s success has led
Kroger to consider implementing similar technology elsewhere, although the companies have not announced any
new or ongoing projects.
“Impressed with the results … Kroger has had discussions with us at Cimcorp to retrofit automation into the
distribution of other production facilities,” the Cimcorp
spokesperson says.
