You might say that things are really cooking now at Williams-Sonoma. This retailer of cookware and home furnishings has grown rapidly since its founding by Chuck Williams some 40 years ago in Sonoma, Calif. The company now offers 425 retail stores, including Williams-Sonoma and Pottery Barn stores, and expects to have $2.1 billion in revenue this year and $5 billion by 2004. It's first five Canadian stores also opened recently.

To accommodate continuing growth and to reach all retail stores from one facility, Williams-Sonoma built a highly automated distribution center in Olive Branch, Miss. The new facility is just across the state line from Memphis where its previous DC was located.

'Capacity and storage constraints at the previous building were the main drivers for the new DC,' says Rick Weeden, director of retail distribution. 'The growth of our business required us to build a bigger and better facility.'

The 1-million square-foot building features 27 swing reach trucks, 80 aisles of very-narrow-aisle (VNA) storage, 87 receiving and shipping docks, and lots of room for future expansion. Additionally, the 6 miles of conveyor (Hytrol Conveyor, www.hytrol.com) are capable of carrying very large cartons. This greatly expands the amount of product that can be transported within the facility, as well as replaces the aging automatic guided vehicles and extensive manual handling found in the old DC.

'Almost 75% of what used to be non-conveyable in the old facility can now be conveyed,' says Michael Miller, manager of retail distribution.

Many of the new conveyors are 36 inches wide compared to the 20-inch units found in the previous building.

'We are now able to convey everything here from salt and pepper shakers to large side chairs,' adds Weeden.

The facility is now completing the processing of its holiday orders, and has been able to handle this peak time with ease. Over 60,000 cartons are shipped daily during this period, while the facility averages about 40,000 a day at other times of the distribution year.

'Our peak seasons have gone incredibly smoothly compared to the old building where we were completely maxed out,' says Weeden.

The old building, just twelve miles away, now processes catalog orders. Another large building has also been built directly next to the new Mississippi DC to hold larger catalog items, furniture, and reserve storage. This 1.1 million square-foot building is connected to the retail DC by a 330-foot corridor.

The heavy task of offloading merchandise arriving at the 46 inbound docks is performed by third-party labor. Another third-party provider also assists in the re-boxing and quality assurance areas of the facility when necessary. Williams-Sonoma associates handle all other functions.

Items not already palletized are placed onto pallets within the inbound trucks and then removed using pallet jacks. Loads are taken to receiving stations near the docks where the Williams-Sonoma workers take over the process.

The stock keeping unit (SKU) of each arriving pallet of merchandise is either entered into a radio frequency (RF) device or computer terminal. The receiving associate assigns a unique license plate bar code that is printed and attached to the pallet. This is then scanned to tie it to the SKU.

One carton from each pallet is diverted to the quality assurance area to be inspected. Additionally, some receipts need new boxes or require the master case to be removed to get to the shippable inner packs. Some chairs, for example, are shipped nested to maximize density in the container. These are re-boxed at receiving before entering storage. Rugs also are wrapped.

With the exceptions of re-box items, non-conveyables, and a small percentage of products that immediately replenish the forward pick areas, the majority of receipts head to reserve storage. Lift trucks take the loads to pickup and delivery stations located at the end of 500-foot-long aisles of VNA racks.

Swing reach truck drivers then pick up the pallets and choose one of the 82,000 locations for putaway. The location bar code and pallet license plate are scanned to alert the warehouse management system (WMS) that the product now resides there. Currently about 70% of reserve rack capacity has been used in the facility, so there is adequate room for growth. Some reserve stock is also stored in the adjoining building. When needed, these items are pulled from racks there and brought by tugger carts through the corridor that joins the two buildings.

Once an item is received, information about it is sent to Williams-Sonoma headquarters in San Francisco so it can be made available for allocation to the stores. These allocations are downloaded to the DC each day at noon and batched for processing the following day. The WMS then directs replenishment of the forward pick areas with SKUs required to fill those orders. These pick areas comprise eight four-level full-case picking modules containing pallet flow and case flow racks, and a three-level split-case module equipped with carton flow racks.

The WMS signals swing reach trucks to pull replenishment products from reserve storage using onboard RF terminals. Drivers scan the license plate and storage location of each pallet they pull, working in one aisle at a time. These are brought to a unique two-level pallet conveyor. Items to replenish the pick modules are dropped on the lower level where they are conveyed to both full-case and split-case drop stations. Here, lift trucks and orderpickers gather the loads and transport them to the back of the pick module racks.

At the same time that the swing reach trucks are retrieving replenishment orders, they are also pulling items that are allocated immediately for the current day's orders. The trucks deposit these loads onto the top level of the pallet conveyor where they bypass the pick modules altogether and travel directly to the fast loading and special handling (FLASH) mezzanine. The FLASH area processes orders that utilize full pallet loads of particular SKUs.

'If we received a demand for 63 toasters that day and our standard pallet load is 60,' explains Weeden, 'then we send a pallet of 60 to FLASH and pull the other three toasters from the pick module. This way we avoid sending the 60 through the module.'

Upon arrival at the FLASH mezzanine, a team of workers scans each pallet. This produces a shipping label for each carton on the pallet load, which may contain cartons destined for a number of stores. The team breaks down the pallet, labels each carton, and places it onto a takeaway conveyor that leads to sortation and shipping. Each two-person team can perform 720 carton picks an hour.

Order filling in the pick modules takes place the following day after replenishment. The full-case area contains a total of 5,015 picking locations with each of the four mezzanine levels featuring pallet flow racks on the bottom of the level and carton flow above.

'This design helped our density here,' says Weeden. 'It gave us several hundred more pick locations.'

Tickets are centrally printed for picks in the full-case area. The ticket displays a description of the item, the SKU, pick location, number of units to select, a store address label, a bar code, and a carton number. A worker scans the batch header of each stack to inform the WMS that picking has begun in that area. Cases are pulled from both the pallet and carton flow racks, labeled, and placed onto a takeway belt that eventually heads to shipping sortation.

Some slower-moving full cases are also picked from a small section of static shelving. Mixed SKUs are gathered here onto pallets by orderpickers as directed by pick tickets. Cartons are then labeled and transported by a belt to sortation.

Split-case items are pulled from 4,920 case flow locations. Each SKU is always stored in the same location within the three-level module unless redefined. Also, SKUs in the split-case area are unique from those stored in the full-case modules. This is due to the limitations of the current WMS, which will be replaced soon.

Picking here is performed using radio frequency wrist scanners, which display the SKU, quantity, and location to pick. Upon arrival at the flow rack, the worker pulls the required quantity, then scans each item and the location from which they came. These are placed into a tote, with each tote representing a store.

The license plate of the tote is also scanned to marry the tote to the product in it before being pushed off onto a takeaway conveyor for transport through the rest of the module and onto an inspection station.

Upon arrival, an inspector scans the tote ID. SKUs and quantities that should be inside the tote appear on the scanning device screen. The inspector compares the contents with the list. If any items are missing, the tote is returned to the modules.

If all is correct, a shipping label is generated. The inspector places the label into the tote and pushes it off onto a conveyor for travel to a pack station. Here, a worker empties the tote into a carton, adds foam dunnage, seals it, and places the shipping label on it. The empty tote is sent to the picking area by a return conveyor.

Cartons next pass through a saw-tooth merge that joins them with items coming from FLASH, the static shelves, and the full case modules. A singulator aligns all cartons into single file with appropriate spacing. These then pass under a fixed scanner as they enter a fast-moving sliding shoe sorter that provides 28 diverts to the shipping docks.

Expandable conveyors are used to load trucks at the docks. Workers hand stack cartons to maximize the cube. Williams-Sonoma relies on over-the-road carriers to deliver goods. Trucks head either to one of 28 regional hubs or to one of the 30 stores currently on a direct-to-store delivery program. Most retail stores receive their deliveries weekly, though higher volume stores, about 28%, receive merchandise twice each week.

While Williams-Sonoma's conveyors are able to transport a large number of the facility's SKUs, there are always some items - such as rugs, large furniture, tables, grills, and curtain rods - that are not able to ride the conveyors. These items are assigned floor level pick locations in a non-conveyables area.

This pick area is replenished daily, with items pulled from the reserve storage by reach truck or lift truck. Lift trucks also perform the day's required picks from here as directed by tickets. Most non-conveyable selections for a particular store are actually chosen the day before picks are made in other areas of the DC. These selections are pulled, labeled, and transported directly to the nine non-conveyable shipping docks for immediate loading onto outbound trucks. If room still exists on the truck after receiving all of its non-conveyables, it is moved to one of the 28 docks of the conveyables shipping area. Once there, the truck is filled the following day with cartons arriving from the pick modules and the FLASH area. This helps to maximize the density of the outbound trailers.

Weeden has been very pleased with the efficiency of the new building.

'It is absolutely meeting our goals,' he says, adding that the only thing he would do differently is to allow more time for testing. 'We had to work through some start-up issues which was compounded by having significantly more volume.'

Weeden and his team are currently evaluating warehouse management systems and hope to have a new one selected for implementation next year.

'I am glad we waited on the new WMS,' he says. 'Just shaking out the bugs in the opening of a new DC was enough to challenge us.'

As growth dictates, the facility can add a second shift and increase its output.

Weeden adds that Williams-Sonoma went the extra mile in the design of the building, so as to attract good employees in the competitive Memphis-area warehousing market. The building is air-conditioned, brightly lit, and features a well-equipped employee fitness center.

'We were as conscious of the associates as we were of the materials handling. That gives us a competitive advantage for recruitment over other DCs in the area,' he says.

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