FORTE helps rue21 Convert their Manual Paper-Based System to a Fully Automated Environment

The Challenge
rue21 is one of the fastest-growing fashion retailers in the country, offering a broad assortment of fashion apparel and accessories for girls and guys.

With a wide selection of styles, rue21 was growing rapidly, opening eight to 10 stores per month. With more than 750 stores in more than 45 states, they needed to cost-effectively improve operations to support not only their existing stores, but also the hundreds of planned retail stores.

The original distribution center employed a manual, paper-based, put-to-store system that required the breakdown and sortation of the items in each case into totes before manually pushing a train of totes to each of 16 put lanes. Each garment was touched twice before it was packed.

The Solution
With input from the rue21 team, FORTE planned, designed and implemented a solution to convert the manual, paper-based system to an automated environment.

In order to achieve this result, FORTE built an additional 16 lanes on a mezzanine level over the existing operation. The manual breakdown operation was completely eliminated. Pallet loads of individual SKUs are now brought to a case conveyor that sorts them into the appropriate put lanes.

A state-of-the-art, put-to-light system was implemented and is controlled by FORTE’s Smart Warehouse Suite™ warehouse control system software. The Smart Warehouse Suite’s Automation Director® receives the store requirements from the warehouse management system and dynamically routes the cases to the appropriate put lanes.

Automation Director also dynamically re-routes residual products from cases that weren’t fully depleted in a lane into other put lanes, and even has a unique algorithm that automatically assigns excess units to the highest volume stores.

After the new upper-level mezzanine went live successfully, the first level was converted to match, resulting in zero downtime or loss of productivity during the implementation. In 2012, the storage capacity of the facility is being doubled, and additional inputs are being added to the automated processing.

The Result
With the new pick-to-light system, rue21 was able to decrease from two shifts to just one. rue21 is now able to handle triple the unit volume; double the number of stores serviced; eliminate the breakdown process; increase efficiency in the put-to-store process by more than 25 percent; improve accuracy of shipments to the stores from 93 to 99.5 percent; and handle seasonal peaks with limited overtime.

The increased capacity has shortened the time from when the product is received at the DC to the store shelf and has enabled rue21 to add related product lines such as footwear and fragrances.