Cabela's Material Handling Case Study

Key Technology

Phase 1

• Over 25,000 Ft. of conveyor
• 2 Hytrol ProSort Sorters (one for retail, one for catalogue)
• Double-sided Sorter at 90 Cartons Per Minute (CPM)
• 3 –Level 87,000 square foot Unarco Pick Module
• 48,000 square feet of Torbeck Mezzanines
• Belted Extendable Truck Loaders/Unloaders in the dock areas
• High Speed Datalogic Scanner
• Mettler Toledo In-Line Scales

Phase 2

• 6,000 feet of Hytrol Conveyor
• 2 Hytrol ProSort Sorters (Ship Alone & Put To Light (PTL))
• 240 Position Pick to Light (PTL) System by ASAP Automation
• Gravity Extendable Truck Loaders (Shipping)
• Mecalux Rack
• Bastian Material Handling Warehouse Control System (WCS) Software and HMI Screens

Business Challenges

• Provide an ergonomic system for large and heavy products
• Have the system up and running to meet their peak season of September – December
• Expanding retail store volume and E-Commerce orders

Results

• The ability to meet seasonal demand increased throughput: Catalogue System achieved 94 CPM and Ship Alone Sorter reached 30 CPM
• Decreased transportation costs as orders to the East Coast no longer had to be shipped from Wisconsin or Nebraska
• Ergonomic handling of product for worker safety and job satisfaction

Multi-Media

Videos

Renderings

Case Study Video- Script

Today's case study is going to be on Cabela's Wheeling West VA distribution center. This is a rendering for Cabela's distribution center. It's actually two buildings, building one for phase one, and building two for phase two. Items that were provided in phase two are shown in yellow, almost everything in building two and the Put-to-Light sorter in building one. Generally product flows in from the receiving area into the pick module, into the accumulation and pack area, and then on to the catalog sorter. The other path is from receiving to the Put-to-light sorter, and directly out to the retail sorter. In building two, it's either full case product handled in this facility and it's either direct to the one sorter that handles both retail operation and consumer operation and product flows out of that ship sorter and into those different areas.

Cabela's titles itself as the world's most foremost outfitter. They are big in hunting, fishing, camping, and boating equipment. They sell predominantly through the catalog and the internet, but in the last decade, they've been increasing their sales through the large retail showrooms.

Cabela's project was funded by the Ohio County Development Authority. They are a federal agency that uses funding to help spark development in the different regional areas. This development is called the highlands. It's a former mine that was stripped down decades ago. Cabela's was the first development in the Highlands area. They have both a store and a distribution center, and this is located right off of I-70. It is a three phase project, and Bastian's has been awarded the first two phases beginning in 2004 and completing stage 2 in 2006. Ohio county is actually the purchaser of all the material handling equipment within the facility and so we are contracted with Ohio county. There are also labor requirements because it's a government project, so 75 % of the labor drove us predominantly into a union institution.

As I mentioned before, there are two phases; the first one much larger than the second. The first phase began in 2004, and the second phase after a few months in 2006. We began installation in June and went live July through December of 2006. It was a phased implementation.

Phase one was very large, one of the largest- over 600,000 square feet, over 25,000 feet of conveyor, and it has two Hytrol pro-sort sorters- one for the retail and one for the catalog operation. The most difficult part of the project was the catalog sort which was double sided, and can handle over 90 cartons per minute. That was definitely the most challenging part, the rest of it was transportation and other portions. One of the most unique things about this project is this is the first time we've used an indexing belt communication for a sawtooth merge. That worked out very nicely for the product they handle and the rates we needed to achieve. The project also included a large pick module, over 87,000 square foot alone in a pick-module, and almost 50,000 square foot of mezzanines. There were also a couple different types of truck extenders- loaders and un-loaders, the most unique of which is a Stuart Unloader Pack that can actually that can travel spur multiple doors. We also did all the selective and drive-in rack within the phase one project.

Phase two project expansion was slightly smaller, but still very large. We had about 6000 feet of conveyor as compared to the first phase's 25,000 feet, at this point we had two Hytrol Prosort 400's, the first for the ship-alone in building two and the for the put-to-light in building one. The most complicated part of this project was the ship-alone sorter which was a 60 carton per minute operation with a product that had an average length of 52 inches. We have a 240 Put to Light system provided by ASAP Automation, and we also used some gravity extendable loaders. At this point they wanted to save money versus the belt extendable, so we used the gravity extendables which worked out very nicely. The rack, the pick-module, and some of the packaging equipment were provided by others as they decided to divide the project up to multiple suppliers.

The receiving area is the first area highlighted in yellow, and this is where we have the traversing extendable conveyors shown in blue. These can be matched up with fixed spurs based on where the door is for your loading point. The product flows up the extendables into the receiving area where it is sorted depending on the quality of that vendor and the product coming in at that point. We added a new foot to take across the receiving area to the put-to-light and the cross-dock area, and product that does not divert off there will continue downstairs where there are additional lanes or can continue directly onto the pick-module for replenishment. This is a picture of some of the equipment up on the mezzanine. Things to note: we used some Blue Arc Traveling Spur gates that were hinged to one of the gravity lanes that worked out really well.

The next area is the pick-module. This is where product is automatically replenished via the pick-belt that runs down the center of the conveyor of the module. It is a three-level module with various belts and gravity conveyors in between each one. This is a picture of the pick module. It's very hard to see from one end to the other because it's over 700 feet long. One of the things with the pick module is after the fact, they were asking for some trash chutes for the empty corrugate so we developed a trash chute using vinyl that would be found used to separate airtight rooms which was really neat.

The next area is the accumulation pack area, so product that comes from the pick-module is sent to the accumulation-pack area. This is a series of 16 lanes that are side-by-side. The operator at the end of each lane will push it down the accumulated lane as its called for and needed, and will later be released to the pack stations when the accumulator is ready. This is a picture of all the accumulation lanes. It has easy accumulation lanes and when a slug is formed it will then progress on to a belt conveyor. This is a view from the sawtooth merge looking back on the mezzanine. This is a view further up of the actual sawtooth lanes feeding from the pack stations to the catalog sorter. This also shows the auto-boxes on the ground which were apart of the phase two installation that fed into the existing catalog sorter.

The next section is the catalog and retail sorters. These are located on the shipping dock. They are lined up almost directly in line with one another, and they handle items that go out to fill mainly catalog orders. The retail sorter was originally used in phase one for ship-alone products and in phase two converted to a retail sorter. This is the merge-in that we have on the retail side, we tied in the line from the existing area to the put-to-light sorter. This shows the chutes from both the catalog and the retail sorter that are connected to the extendable. This is a view down the catalog sorter, it is a two-sided sorter which ships product directly onto UPS, USPS, or FedEx.

The ship-alone area is the next area. This was a phase two project. Product from here goes through the three level module. We used a 3-1 merge for this phase of the operation as opposed to a saw-tooth merge in order to get the rates we needed to achieve and the size of the product. The three to one merge send items to the pro-sorter and there is a recirculation line that feeds items back in. This is a picture of product exiting the three level pick module for the ship-alone, and this is a view of the pro-sort ship-alone for the ship conveyor and a side view of the gravity extendable lanes.

The final area is the put-to-light area. This was installed as part of phase two but was put in building one. As mentioned before, this receives product from the mezzanine or from the pick area in building one. The product is merged together and feeds the sorter. There are two different type of lanes. The first type of lane goes down to feed the put-to-light system, the other type actually spirals around and goes underneath the sorter for put-away on the receiving operation, and there's an option to go straight through and to cross dock, so product doesn't need to go to either one of those areas, it can directly to the retail sorter. Product that goes down the put-to-light lanes will use the ASAP Put-to-Light system to indicate which bins and boxes the product should enter. When the cases are full, they're put on the same belt as the cross-dock belt, and that's conveyed up to the retail sorter.

We have our standard RS view of HMI's, and all of this is done by Controls in BMH. This is just a couple of different views of our standard package with the color coding. The sort codes are manually entered across the screen but there are ways to enter those and download them through a system and ASAP have been in charge of all those interfaces. One of the new things we've added to our Exacta sort package is a rate monitor, which tracks real time rates describing how product goes through the system.