Nazarene Publishing, the printing arm for the Church of the Nazarene,
needed to combine all their sales and returns into one high throughput,
labor efficient and accurate system. The heart of their system is a
back of 12 top drive horizontal carousels supplied by KardexRemstar
International Inc.
Nazarene, located in the middle of downtown Kansas City, currently ships
up to 1,475 orders consisting of 4,000 to 8,500 lines per day. They
have traditionally supplied wholesale books and literature to Christian
bookstores as well as individual churches and direct mail houses. These
traditional sales are now combined with an expanding e-commerce web
site.
The online business started in 1997 and has quickly increased from a few
orders a week to over 200. "Orders are coming in faster than ever, but
it's not problem for the carousels to keep up." Says Barry Russell,
customer service manager for Nazarene Publishing House.
With the horizontal carousels arranged
into three workstations with four carousels per workstation, Russell
says the overall productivity of the distribution operation had increased
up to 30%. In addition, the carousels will help eliminate downtime
previously associated with the cycle counting.
The Horizontal Carousel system is
located in the distribution center. Nazarene integrates conveyors
to transport orders from one carousel workstation to the next. This
pick-and-pass methodology allows SKUs to be located in any one of
the carousels, eliminating multiple positions and reducing inventory.
An order is sent from workstation one to workstation two and on to
workstation three. If none of the carousels in a workstation have
any SKUs for the tote, the tote is automatically routed to the next
workstation via take-away conveyor. A large carton area has SKUs that
are stored on static shelving due to their large size or low velocity
are combined to complete the order.
"One of the stickiest problems we
encounter involves the bookstands that we often send out to our field
representatives," said Russell. "We host 250 to 300 events a year
which require us to pack kits for each event and send them to our
representatives." He continued, ?Each kit contains a bookstand plus
over 5000 pieces of literature packed in 100 cases. Each case has
over 1000 lines with varying quantities of each line ranging from
1 to 100 pieces."
A significant portion of the literature
distributed to representatives is sent back to the distribution facility
to be returned to stock and distributed again. Up to 50 out of the
100 cases sent out are returned. These 100 cases contain up to 500
lines. Due to the large number of SKUs returned daily, a system providing
not only efficient picking, but also fast returns was required.
The returns are broken down by SKU.
Each SKU is scanned, associated with a tote by scanning its license
plate and put on conveyor to the correct carousel workstation or shelving
area. The operator then scans the tote and the carousels position
to the correct carrier, the pick-to-light trees indicate which carousel,
carrier, shelf, and cell to place the SKU.
The carousel system has dramatically
reduced the required man-hours. The system takes only four people
to run the carousels, in comparison to having required 12 pickers
with the previous system that utilized static shelving and printed
packing lists to direct their pickers activities.
"We used to pick and pack orders
directly in the box," he added. "Now with the carousels, we're filling
orders faster than we can pack them for shipment, so we've separated
the picking process from the packing. We are quite pleased with what
we see." The carousels are an integral element of the overall expansion
and improvement of Nazarene?s overall distribution capabilities. Nazarene,
which opened its doors in 1912, has grown over the years from a small
one-room shop to eight buildings and over $30 million per year. In
fact, as part of the their expansion, Nazarene constructed a new building
for their production facility and linked this to their 40,000 square-foot
distribution center by installing conveyors to interface with the
carousel system.
"We began growing to the point where
we were simply out of room and had to figure out a faster way to process
orders while eliminating errors. We could have thrown more people
at the problem, but then we'd have people tripping over each other.
"Ultimately, we needed to stay competitive, and going to a Horizontal
Carousel system was the route that would work best."
"We began to look at what we should
do, how we could design it, and what was important to us," Russell
said. "Many of the sites we visited featured carousels in their operation.
After brainstorming, we began to draw up plans, changing the design
four or five times until we found one that worked best for us.
Once the carousels were in place
it took employees a very short time to become comfortable with the
system. How committed were the employees to the process? "Some employees
who were at retirement age stayed to see the process through," Russell
marveled. "They had nothing but good things to say. The employees
do not want to go back to the static shelving and the walking and
searching that we used to do. The carousels have provided us with
a major morale boost."