Designed for rapid strategic delivery of military troops and all types of cargo, the C-17 Globemaster III aircraft is huge. Each $198 million C-17 that Boeing builds is 179 feet long and 55 feet high. And each C-17 is comprised of roughly 100,000 parts.

Twelve horizontal carousels – arranged in six pods of two carousels each – now house 60% of this parts inventory in a Long Beach, Calif. facility. The carousels are a key part of a warehouse modernization that the carousel manufacturer led for Boeing as its systems integrator.

"Before automation," says Jim Brown, senior manager for C-17 inventory and receiving, "some areas of the warehouse stored multiple part numbers in the same bin due to space constraints." That resulted in increased pick time and chances for errors, he explains. Employees also had to traverse nearly 250,000 square feet of storage area with pushcarts, manually picking parts.

With the automated carousels, however, each new part receipt is stored in a unique location, allowing better age control and first-in/first-out inventory management.

Some 60,000 locations of various sizes are available in the carousel system. The carousels interface with conveyors on two levels, which convey parts in totes into or out of the system.

Picking productivity with the combination of carousels and a warehouse management system has improved five to one compared to the manual system, says Brown. An increased number of daily work orders are now processed. There's also a considerable cost savings in labor hours from the automation, he adds.

Boeing's facility, says John Horvath, supply chain specialist for the company's warehouse modernization project, is now "world-class." There are "significant improvements in inventory operations that will support the cost efficiency objectives of the C-17 for years to come," he adds.

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