Servicing online orders swiftly

-- Modern Materials Handling, 5/15/2002

Starting in 1828 as a publisher of books and then in 1912 as just a distributor of them, Baker & Taylor has been in business for 174 years.

But there’s nothing old fashioned about this company when it comes to the Web.  It aggressively pursues Internet retailing as part of a multi-channel business that rings up over $1 billion annually from sales of books, videos, CDs, DVDs, and related entertainment products.

Baker & Taylor fills its own online orders for these items. It also serves as a third-party logistics provider on behalf of other retailers’ Web orders. This 3PL role makes a lot of sense to Harry Baldeo, vice president of engineering, Baker & Taylor.  “If we have it in our inventory, why ship and then have to repack it? Why not ship directly to the customer?”

Baker & Taylor’s inventory is vast.  It ranges between 400,000 and 600,000 book and entertainment titles and is one of the largest in this industry in the U.S.

But it’s not just being big on inventory that counts. Fulfillment operations are flexible and scaleable. These operations are sufficiently flexible with increased staffing to handle higher trade season levels, for example.

Servicing orders swiftly is a big competitive edge and distribution plus for Baker & Taylor, too. The company prides itself on processing and shipping orders with speed  - whether orders are for Internet sales, for traditional retailers, or for library customers.

 “If a customer places an order on Monday, we try to get it in their hands by Tuesday.  From Massachusetts to Maryland and as far west as Harrisburg in Pennsylvania, we get next day ground delivery,” says Baldeo.

 “Everyone in the industry has the same books and the same products.  Products don’t set you apart, service sets you apart, and we are working hard to make it happen. We can ship out some items in less than six hours,” he explains, “and sometimes a lot faster than that.  We focus on getting orders out.”

A fully on-line, paperless process for batch picking items in groups of 26 to 120 orders per batch helps make possible the company’s rapid turnaround time for direct-to-consumer orders, he says.  A warehouse management system drives this process. Pickers are equipped with radio frequency terminals to scan bar codes and to relay selection data in real time to and from the mainframe computer. The process maximizes order selection efficiency, says Baldeo. It also minimizes walk times for pickers filling carts with items on orders.

Conveyors then take away orders in totes, sending them on to sorting, packing, and shipping. In some cases, Baker & Taylor provides customized gift-wrapping and personalized gift card services before orders go out the door.

With distribution centers in Georgia, Nevada, New Jersey, Illinois, and New Hampshire, the company has made major capital investments in materials handling technologies that support fulfillment. Even so, Baldeo says, “Baker & Taylor has automated only to the extent that automation makes sense; capital expenditures for process flow improvement must be justified with labor and cost savings.”