DrVita puts automated storage, robotics and software to work

DrVita.com; Las Vegas, Nevada
Size: 72,000 square feet
Products: Dietary supplements, vitamins, minerals, herbs and essential and healthy oils
SKUs: 10,000 to 15,000
Throughput: 1,000 orders per eight-hour shift/Three lines per order on average
Shifts per day/days per week: One shift per day/Five days per week plus some production on the weekend.
Employees: 15 in production

In DrVita.com’s Las Vegas manufacturing and distribution facility, horizontal carousels and robotic extractors are at the heart of an automated order fulfillment system designed to meet today’s needs with room to scale as the business expands.

Receiving: Product can be received from a pallet quarantine area (1) after it has passed quality control testing at DrVita’s internal lab and at the receiving docks from third-party providers. In either case, the receiving process is the same. In the receiving processing area (3), each shipment includes a packing slip with a purchase order number. When a receiver keys the PO number into the computer, items associated with that order are displayed for verification. Any new items are cubed and weighed to determine the optimal storage medium when the product is put into the carousel. Once the receipt has been counted, the system provides two storage options: One is to assign the item to a pallet location in the reserve pallet storage area (4); the other is for warehouse operators to choose a new pallet location. If, for example, the facility already has the same SKU, lot number and expiration date in the facility, they may store those products together. If the lot number and expiration date are different, the products may be stored apart from one another to avoid confusion.

Replenishment: DrVita has two replenishment processes for its horizontal carousel system (5), which is referred to as a primary location. In the first, the carousel is replenished on a daily basis whenever the inventory for a stock keeping unit (SKU) hits its minimum level.

Meanwhile, the facility also manages a “hot” replenishment process for items that are needed to fill orders during that shift. Hot items may come from newly received merchandise at the receiving dock (2), what DrVita refers to as virtual inventory because the product is received into the system and then delivered directly to the order fulfillment area; or hot items may be pulled from the reserve pallet storage area (4). In either case, an associate will pick by the case to one of multiple pallets on an order picking lift truck. The system distinguishes the hot picks from standard replenishment picks on the associate’s bar code scanner so that hot picks are done first. The system determines when a pallet is complete.

At that point, the associate delivers the pallet to the replenishment module (6) at the horizontal carousel (5). There, an associate scans the license plate bar code label on the pallet. A tote is delivered to the replenishment workstation (6) and a picture of the item to be put away appears on the screen. Totes are divided into two, four, six and eight bin locations, depending on the size of the item and the number of items. Once the items have been placed into the tote, the associate hits the touchscreen. The tote is taken away and queued for storage in the carousel system (5) while a new tote appears. The system can queue up to five bins at a time.

The replenished totes are picked up by the robotic extractor, which delivers them to the appropriate storage location. Or, in the case of a hot item, the tote may be put on a conveyor (7) and delivered to an order fulfillment workstation (8) to pick an order.

Picking: The order fulfillment station (8) is manned by one picker. The order fulfillment process is initiated when the warehouse management system (WMS) creates a batch of orders. The system directs the robotic extractor to remove a blue tote from the carousel (5), which is then conveyed (7) to the workstation (8) and presented to the picker at a 45-degree angle for ease of sight. At the operator’s knee level, there are five red totes that are divided into cells to handle one, two or four orders (based on the cube size of the customer order). The middle red tote is reserved for one-line, one-piece orders. This one-line process allows the system to look for one-line orders on every blue tote that is brought down for other orders, using the opportunity to pull product without additional system transactions. The operator can process the five totes simultaneously.

The order totes have a display above them telling the operator which tote is active, the cell’s location and the quantity of items to place in each cell/tote. The system automatically takes totes with completed orders away and inducts new orders without any operator actions. The operator hits a task complete button after every transaction and the system automatically does the rest.

Packing and shipping: As the red tote arrives at the order packing and inspection workstation (9), a bar code scanner on the conveyor reads the license plate on the tote and prints the customer invoice. The operator scans the bar code on the invoice and then each item in order. This provides a double verification that the order and inventory levels are always correct. Once verified, the operator puts the invoice in with the order and sends the tote to the carton manifesting area (10). Because every item’s physical size is entered in the WMS database, box sizes are assigned the moment the order is inducted into the system.

When the order arrives, the department knows which box size to use and places the order in that box. They work from a queue of pre-built and taped boxes from an automatic case erector that erects and tapes the shipping boxes. The operator then puts in the correct amount of void-fill and weighs the order. This triple checks order contents and provides the necessary information for shipping costs. The system then automatically prints, and the operator applies, the shipping label and sorts the boxes on pallets based on shipping carrier. Orders are now ready for shipping (11).

System suppliers
System integration, robotics, order picking software and workstations: Integrated Systems Design (ISD), isddd.com
Horizontal carousels: Sapient Automation, mdciautomation.com
Conveyor: TGW Systems, tgw-group.com/us
Lift trucks, Raymond, raymondcorp.com
Warehouse management system: Accellos, accellos.com
ERP: Microsoft Dynamics, microsoft.com
Cubing and weighing: CubiScan (Quantronix), cubiscan.com
Carton erector and taping systems: Lantech, lantech.com
Plastic totes for carousel system: Flexcon, flexcontainer.com