Conair Material Handling Case Study

Key Technology

• Full Case Picking: Deep-Lane Pallet-Flow Conveyors with Brakes
• Saw-tooth Merge, Belt-Merge, High-Speed Belt Curves
• High-Speed Shoe Sorter at 350 feet per minute
• Parallel High-Speed Label Print-and-Apply Machines for increased throughput
• Fluid Loading Powered Extendable Conveyors for Parcel Shipment
• Warehouse Control System (WCS) Software and Human Machine Interfaces (HMI) Screens
• Software Interfacing Solution with Manhattan WM

Business Challenges

• Aggressive implementation schedule to deliver system in time for peak season Holiday orders
• Changing retail customer order profiles
• Growing order volume and labor requirements

Results

• Met the Christmas rush and eliminated all back orders
• High throughput, systematic process reduced handling
• Number of days to fulfill orders cut in half
• Number of retail shipping penalties virtually eliminated
• Order accuracy increased through automation and label verification scanning system
• ROI based on reduced manpower and handling costs

Multi-Media

Videos

Conair Webcast

Renderings

Conair Rendering

Conair Picking Lines

Conair Picking Lines 02

Conair Sawtooth Merge

Conair Shipping Lanes

Case Study Video- Script

Founded in 1959 by Mr. Lee Rizzuto and his parents, Conair has become a leading manufacturer of personal and healthcare appliance brands to include: Waring, Cuisinart, Pollenex, Scünci, Interplak, Jheri Redding, and Rusk. Conair enjoys exceptional growth of its products and sales, which lead to their need for additional warehouse automation to keep pace with increasing order volumes.

Operations Design Consulting worked with Conair to develop the system requirements, and they were the Customer's representative throughout the project installation. We're grateful for the efforts of John Yacka, whose dynamic leadership and facilitating skills kept the project teams focused and on track.

Bastian Material Handling (or BMH) was selected by Conair to provide and install new warehouse automation at its Distribution Centers located in New Jersey and Arizona. The larger New Jersey-facility is highlighted in this case study, and it consists of a new sortation conveyor system to automate wave-picking processes that had been performed manually from order-picker trucks. Also, in-line print-and-apply carton-labeling systems were integrated into the conveyor system to eliminated the manual application of shipping labels.

The flow of cartons starts in the pallet-flow pick lanes, then cartons are merged together and travel through a barcode scan tunnel, and then receive shipping labels at the print-and-apply station. Once labeled, cartons are automatically sorted to order accumulation lanes, where cases are palletized and moved to truck shipping lanes. Cases shipped via parcel carriers are fluid loaded into trailers.

The New Jersey project provides mechanized systems for the processing of full-case carton orders via a conveyor system. Persons pick cases from pallets and place them onto belt conveyors. Along the conveyor path, each case is scanned and the BMH Warehouse Control System retrieves the unique customer information to print on the shipping label. Each case travels in-front-of a bank of automated print-and-apply machines where labels are applied to the sides of the cases. A sortation conveyor system automatically sorts cases by order to 37 shipping lanes. The system at Conair-Arizona is a scaled-down version of the New Jersey system.

The project was awarded to BMH in April 2006 and the conveyor system had to be fully commissioned by the 1st of September; the start of Conair's Holiday-shipping season. BMH and its equipment suppliers and installation crews are experienced at executing aggressive project schedules. The new distribution conveyor system, mezzanine support structure, and electrical controls were delivered and installed in 3 months time, all while the customer continued to process daily orders. The WCS communications and carton routing was tested during August, and the system was successfully put into Production ahead of schedule.

The New Jersey system is made-up-of nearly a mile of Hytrol powered and gravity conveyors. Hytrol's latest high-speed sortation conveyor, the Prosort Series 400 sliding-shoe sorter, was selected for its high-speed and ability to divert cases on close centers to side-by-side order-accumulation lanes. Weber Marking – 5200 Series - print-and-apply machines provide high-speed data transfer for label application via integrated Local Area Network connections to the machine printers.

BMH used DataLogic's Oscillating-Mirror scanners in a scan-tunnel configuration to read barcodes on the sides and tops of cases. Pallet loads of cases are brought to the picking areas and are slotted in deep pallet-flow gravity lanes. Interroll-Axmann belt conveyors were selected for accuracy of merging cases together and tracking cases through curves. Best/Flex powered-extendable roller conveyors can fully extend into trailers to fluid load cases.

BMH uses critical-path planning tools to maintain tight control over the deliveries of equipment to the project site. To met the accelerated project schedule, installation crews worked seven-days-a-week in concert with equipment deliveries.

For every sorter conveyor application, BMH provides a Human-Machine Interface control console (or HMI screens). The HMI allows the System Operator to simply "point-and-click" buttons to remotely start-and-stop the entire system. Also, the HMI provides a visual representation of the conveyors via color coding of the conveyors; for example, green-colored conveyors mean the conveyors are turned on and running. Blinking red or yellow lights on the screen direct operators to alarm conditions; for example, an emergency-stop pull cord is activated.

This HMI visual shows a sub-zone of the system where all the pick-to-belt induction lanes merge onto a three-to-one saw-tooth merge conveyor.

BMH provides customization of its controls to respond to unique customer requests. This screens shows how dialog control boxes were added to provide options for the System Operator. For the screen shown, the operator can click a button on the screen to allow the saw-tooth merge to operator in a fully autonomous mode, or the operator can manually take control of the induction lanes to empty cartons out of individual picking zones.

The system includes eight (8) pallet-flow picking areas (or sub-zones) that are serviced by four (4) 100-foot long pick-belt conveyors. The cases travel from the picking zones and are accumulated on Hytrol's ABEZ zero-pressure accumulation conveyors.

The accumulation conveyors flow cases toward a "saw-tooth" merge where the cartons are released in groups (or slugs) based on lane priorities set by the customer. Once merged into a single file, the cases travel up an inclined conveyor belt to the automatic-labeling area that is elevated above the system on a mezzanine.

Cases are automatically spaced apart using gapping conveyors. The cases travel through a scan tunnel equipped with five DataLogic oscillating-mirror scanners that can read barcodes on the sides and tops of cases. After a case is scanned and identified, the BMH Warehouse Control System will associate (or "marry") the carton with the next "expected" case pulled from a database of customer orders. The printable data for each customer-shipping label is quickly retrieved from a data base and sent to the Weber label printing machines. Each carton is tracked while traveling on the printer-belt conveyor; and at the precise moment, the BMH controller triggers the printer-applicator to apply the shipping label to the side of the case. There are four in-line printer machines, and labels are applied in round-robin fashion, so that a printer applies a label to Every 4th Case as they pass by.

After cases are labeled, they are merged and inducted into the high-speed sliding-shoe sorter. The Bastian Controls track each case across the sorter and divert cases onto order-accumulation lanes that are assign by the Customer's WMS. The orders are palletized and "forklifted" to the shipping docks. Some cases are diverted to Parcel-shipping lanes, and flow over a forklift passageway, and then down gravity slides (or chutes) and onto powered conveyor.

85-foot long, Best/Flex, powered-roller extendable conveyors, allow Conair to fluid load Parcel cases directly into trailers. The conveyors are easily expanded "into and out-of" the trailers with the aid of motorized powered end trucks.

The project was successful on many levels. Under an extremely tight schedule, the system was moved from test to production mode several days early. This allowed the customer to get a jump start on new orders for the month. For ease of maintaining critical system software, Conair had a special request to run the BMH WCS on a dedicated server, and to locate it in their climate-controlled computer room. BMH was able to accommodate the request, and took the opportunity to utilize the Conair Local Area Network to pass information back-and-forth between the WCS and Conair's WMS. Also, utilizing the Local Area Network over conventional "hard-wired" communications, allowed for faster downloads of information to the label printers; this provided an increase to the system throughput – roughly 10 cartons more per minute. BMH was able to accommodate Conair's requirement to save floor space by providing a custom-designed high-speed sorter conveyor that utilizes overlapping divert switches to pull divert centers closer together. Most important with the new system, Conair set a company-wide record for the highest volume of orders shipped in a month.

In January, we brought on-line the smaller "sister" system at Conair's DC in Arizona. Start-up was smooth and the customer seemed impressed that everything worked right out of the gate.