Fast-Growing Apparel Company Achieves Best-in-Class eFulfillment Services

Replenishment, Order Fulfillment, and Nationwide Parcel Management Challenge

Kenco inherited a struggling operation in Salt Lake City. The 60,000 square-foot facility was disorganized and poorly managed, leading to numerous delivery and quality issues as the company’s ecommerce order volumes continued to grow. The site handles 27,000 unique SKUs and processes 6 million units per year, with a nearly 200% spike in outbound volumes during Black Friday/Cyber Monday. Kenco was tasked with improving throughput and establishing best-in-class service levels to support retail store replenishment, online order fulfillment, and nationwide parcel management.

Integrated Distribution & Transportation Services Solution

Kenco’s integrated services solution – encompassing both distribution services and outbound transportation management – was qualitatively different. Using the operational excellence tools and methodologies that are integral to the Kenco Operating System (KOS), we managed to tackle the “low-hanging fruit” of poor visual management, poor inventory management, and late shipments. Kenco also leveraged our Best Practices group and the Kenco Innovation Labs to conduct a profile analysis and identify potential, next-level solutions in the areas of automation and robotics.

Best-in-C lass Ecommerce Fulfillment Center Results

Within one year, Kenco dramatically transformed the site into a showcase, best-in-class ecommerce fulfillment center, improving the site’s layout, inventory control, and labor management practices, leading to better KPI performance overall. Kenco continues to achieve best-in-class service levels and provides Fanzz with efficient order fulfillment, parcel optimization and auditing services, and end-to-end visibility with real-time reporting capabilities.

Lean Warehousing Philosophies

As companies examine their warehouse operations to maximize efficiency, it is important to realize there is no one answer and no silver bullet that will transform an inefficient warehouse into a smoothly operating lean warehouse. What is needed is an organizational embrace of lean warehousing philosophies - a culture of continuous improvement that drives inefficiencies out of warehouse operations.

Download this Embracing Lean Warehousing eBook and discover the seven areas you need to examine as companies embrace lean philosophies - and how they serve to avoid the “three deadly sins” of warehouse operations: travel distance, touches, and processing of paper.