How Mikasa sets your table
Neither fine table settings nor quality glassware present obstacles to Mikasa's high-speed, automated distribution center, designed to pick, pack, and ship 600,000 fragile cases monthly.
By DAVID MALONEY -- Modern Materials Handling, 10/1/1999
Creating an automated system able to handle fragile tableware without damage is a challenge of major proportions. After all, it isn't easy to process orders with automatic efficiency without leaving pieces of broken china all over the warehouse floor. This is what faced Mikasa when planning its new distribution center in Charleston, SC.The result is a facility with a high degree of automation well suited to handling Mikasa's line of dinnerware, crystal, glassware, and flatware. There are 13 miles of conveyor, a very dense storage area, an efficient sortation system, and a high degree of redundancy for all of it.
"The greatest advantage to me is our ability through automation to service our customers, to provide them with value-added services, a quick turnaround time, and a very high degree of order accuracy," says Tony Santarelli, executive vice president of operations. The company sells to leading department stores and also operates its own chain of retail outlet stores.
Since moving to its new facility in Charleston, Mikasa has increased order accuracy up to 99.9% and processes orders within 36 hours.
Another key addition is an efficient pick and pack operation. Mikasa, like many of today's suppliers to retailers, has experienced huge growth in the number of small orders. Retailers no longer want high inventory levels, so they order items in smaller quantities as they need them. Mikasa now handles about three times more orders than it did 2 years ago.
Before moving south, Mikasa had operated from three buildings in Secaucus, NJ. Those facilities did not have the automation needed for the company to keep up with customer demand, nor was there room to grow as was engineered into the new facility. Santarelli says the move also came as the 50-year-old, $438-million company went public.
Mikasa chose Charleston because of its ocean port (most products come from Europe and the Far East), available land for expansion, and a good workforce.
Since the key to efficiency in automation is to keep product moving, Mikasa designed the system to minimize downtime.
"I don't think we would have been able to survive doing what we now do in a manual environment," admits Santarelli. "We would always be behind."
Receipts arrive at Mikasa'a 20 receiving docks. Container loads are first staged while counts are verified.
Each of the 25,000 stock keeping units (SKUs) has its dimensions and weight stored within the warehouse management system (WMS). Any new SKUs received at the facility are scanned into the WMS then measured and weighed by a cubing/ weighing system.
Receipts are first placed on 44 X 48 in. wooden slip sheets at the staging area. Mikasa chose this type of slave pallet because of its low profile (less then 1 1/2 inches) which saves on vertical height in the storage bays. The system uses the cubing information gathered earlier to provide workers with an optimal stacking arrangement for the cartons upon the slave pallets. Each slip sheet has a license plate that is also scanned into the WMS to marry the cartons to them.
Following directions relayed from the WMS, a lift truck operator takes the pallet sheet to a designated pick-up/delivery station located at the end of a high bay storage area aisle.
The high-bay area has 38 aisles. Fourteen trans-stacking storage/retrieval trucks (SRTs) travel these aisles doing both putaway and picking. Each truck is equipped with a double shuttle able to handle two slip sheets at a time.
The operator first scans the slip sheet's bar code and sends the information by radio frequency to the WMS. The software then sends back a storage location and the driver proceeds to that location. Once there, the operator scans the location to verify proper putaway.
As a truck enters an aisle, it engages rails mounted on the floor and ceiling that guide the truck at high speed along the extremely narrow aisles.
Picking at Mikasa is performed by wave, with the wave composed of all the orders scheduled for fulfillment that day.
Harry Wamboldt, vice president of operations, says, "The efficiency of the wave pick now is five to six times greater than our old pick ticket environment."
There are two primary picking modes for full cartons in the high bay area. One is by the SRTs and the other is from a five-level, pick-to-belt mezzanine.
Picking from the SRTs is interspersed with their putaway. The WMS directs the trucks to locations containing SKUs needed to complete all orders within the wave. Operators load full slip sheet pallets and individual cartons as directed. They scan each location ID to verify proper picking and quantity.
Operators take picks to the end of the aisles and hoist them to a second-level mezzanine above the pick-up and delivery area. There are 38 labeling stations here, one for each aisle. The WMS directs printing of labels for each carton. These are manually applied by workers, who then lift the cartons to a take-away conveyor.
Meanwhile, the 1,000 fastest moving SKUs are stored in the five-level mezzanine sandwiched between two aisles near the center of the high bay area. While putaway is performed the same as in other aisles, picking on the mezzanine is done manually by workers who pull full cartons, apply shipping labels, and then place them onto a conveyor belt for takeaway.
There are several possible destinations for all picked cartons. Full carton orders are sent directly to shipping for later accumulation. Some other cartons are sent to open stock shelving located on a second level mezzanine above receiving. This 115,000 sq ft area contains individual items covering 18,000 SKUs. Such items might include a single piece of stemware, a box of four glasses, or an individual plate a customer may special order to replace a broken piece from a prized placesetting.
The third destination is a "fast active" zone with flow racks located within the mezzanine above receiving. The top 750 SKUs in each wave that require more than one master carton of pick and pack product are stored here. Unlike the pick-to-belt area, these SKUs may vary daily, since they correspond directly to that day's wave. The fast active zone is designed for high volume handling, as its productivity is three times higher than that of the remaining open stock areas in the warehouse.
Key to order processing is the pick and pack area, which includes those items from open stock and fast active that require re-packaging. This is the most labor-intensive operation at the facility.
In both areas, the WMS directs workers to pick items into totes on wheeled carts. The WMS first prints a header label that tells the worker the SKU name, number, location, and amount to be picked for the wave. Each tote also has a bar code that is scanned into the WMS to marry SKUs with totes. The tote is next directed to a preparation area where a worker wraps any loose items and places the UPC label printed with the header on the new packaging. Items then go back into the totes.
The totes next travel to two tilt tray sorters located on the third level of the mezzanine. There are 424 trays in the sorting system and 298 chutes. A worker removes the contents from each tote and hand scans the items before inducting them onto trays. The WMS then assigns a chute where the full order will be accumulated.
Mikasa currently sorts about 2,500-3,000 items each hour.
A red light illuminates at the chute to indicate that an order is complete. A worker then selects an appropriately sized carton moving by on an overhead conveyor. The packer uses a wrist scanner to read the license plate on the carton, each item, and the ID on the chute, marrying the three together. All pieces are placed within the carton.
Cartons then flow to a packaging machine that fills void areas with plastic bags of expanding foam. The cartons are next sealed and sent by conveyor to an area where they are scanned and weighed. The WMS compares the actual weight with a predetermined total of the items that are supposed to be in the order. Any differences will help to determine if the correct items are in the box. A shipping label is then automatically applied to the carton.
A shoe sorter then diverts cartons to three shipping areas servicing 60 docks. One handles small orders that will be sent via parcel service, the second serves Mikasa's own retail stores, while the third comprises the wholesale shipping zone. Between 16,000 and 20,000 cartons are handled each day, with peak throughput of about 30,000.
Orders in the wholesale area are consolidated on pallets. Once a pallet is full, it is assigned a license plate. The pallet and each carton are scanned and then the entire pallet and load are stretch-wrapped for storage. A fork truck moves the load to an adjacent short-term rack assigned by the WMS. The product will remain there until ready to be loaded onto an over-the-road truck.
The automation has created an extremely accurate order processing system, currently over 99% accurate.
Already Mikasa has experienced a tremendous increase in sales within the past year, and the new distribution center has been able to meet that growth. The facility is constantly being tweaked. Santarelli says it is similar to "driving a Ferrari" now and will only become more efficient with time.
"Our productivity continues to improve," adds Wamboldt. "There is nothing like seasoning and familiarity to help that along."
SYSTEM SNAPSHOT
Mikasa Distribution Center
Charleston, SC
Warehouse size: 536,000 sq ft. with
an additional 246,000 sq ft on mezzanine levels
Stock keeping
units: 25,000
Peak monthly carton throughput:
600,000
High-bay storage: 74 ft./ 13 pallet racks high with
105,000 locations
System Suppliers:
System Integrator:
SDI 818-890-6002
Conveyors, shipping sorter:
Buschman 513-881-5329
Empty carton conveyor:
Jervis B. Webb 248-553-1220
Trans-stacking storage/retrieval
trucks:
Raymond 800-235-7200
High bay storage racks:
Frazier Industrial Co. 908-876-3001
Warehouse management
system:
Manhattan Associates 770-955-5533
RFDC scanners:
Symbol Technologies 516-783-4915
Fixed scanners:
PSC/Laserdata 800-843-2700
In-line scales:
Ramsey Technology 612-783-2500
In-line labeling:
Veri-code Systems 630-515-8020
Bulk label printers:
Monarch Marking Systems 513-865-2123
Foam packaging system:
Sealed Air
Corp. 203-791-3550
A new pattern for this china
Designing a new distribution center is always a challenge. Since Mikasa's Charleston S.C. facility was new, Tony Santarelli and Harry Wamboldt realized it was also a great opportunity to be creative.
"I don't know how many people ever get to start with a clean piece of paper," says Santarelli.
The planning actually started about five years before the first shovel of dirt was turned.
Santarelli's team and integrator SDI conducted surveys and personal interviews with a wide-range of customers to determine what they liked about Mikasa and its products, what they perceived as their own needs, and how they saw the future. The results helped Mikasa design a facility that would meet distribution requirements far into the future.
The original concept was very conventional, lots of rack and fork lifts. But as the design team began evaluating the data, it realized a traditional approach would not provide "value engineering" over the long-term.
"We did not design a system to fit into a building," says Wamboldt, "but rather we designed the system, then built the building around it. The design really originated with our customers."
"We had a good team who really got into it," adds Santarelli. "Someone would come up with an idea that would feed someone else's ideas. People want to be creative."
Wamboldt recalls the first major construction meeting held between the integrators, contractors, and Mikasa's design team. He says that after two days of discussion Don DeSanctis of SDI stood up and said "I want you all to remember one thing. Keep the rain off of my system."
That summed up the entire project to Walmboldt. "What DeSanctis was saying to the contractors was to keep away from anything that impedes the needs of our customers."
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