In December of 1987, Easton Sports opened an automated warehouse in Salt Lake City to distribute its line of hockey gear, baseball bats and other sports equipment. It was a noteworthy achievement featuring extensive use of conveyors and a sophisticated tilt tray sorter. The facility pushed the company's distribution efforts to new levels and was covered by Modern Materials Handling in a July, 1988 story (scroll down for Click on MMH story link). But, as anyone who has been in distribution for awhile can attest, things change.

'In recent years, there has been a great deal of consolidation in the customer base for our sporting goods,' says Scott Thompson, general manager. 'This has resulted in an increase in the size of the average shipment.

'Until last year, the facility batch picked orders for a large number of customers and then relied on the tilt tray sorter to split the orders for shipping. But these methods were no longer the most cost-effective way to meet the distribution challenge of shipping larger volumes to fewer destinations. These included products for big name customers, such as Wal-Mart, Target and The Sports Authority.

'Those volumes created a pinch point at the tilt tray sorter,' recalls Thompson. 'We had a lot of man hours involved in loading and unloading the sorting system. So, we looked for ways to bypass it.

'Along with the changes in order profile, Easton was also facing the end of the line with its warehouse management system (WMS). Its WMS supplier had gone out of business. And while the system was still operating productively, it lacked many of the newer components that could allow for increased volumes and more flexibility.

Meanwhile, company sales and lines shipped were seeing double digit increases. Clearly, Easton needed to make a change.

'We wanted to gain productivity,' says Thompson, 'and had squeezed everything possible out of the old WMS. Our CEO, Tony Palma, also recognized the need to upgrade to better reach our changing customer base.

' Last year, Easton ripped out the tilt tray system and most of the conveyor. It moved to a new warehouse management system (LIS) and went from batch picking to pick-to-order for most processing.

The results of the moves have been impressive. Productivity has risen an average of 14%, as measured per man-hour, and Easton expects to save $208,000 in labor costs this year alone.

The company has also improved inventory tracking and is better able to handle its peak seasons. Additionally, most products are now ready to ship within 24 hours, and accuracy has improved to 99.8%. Much of the accuracy improvement has been due to a new process of scanning and checking every carton as it passes though a packing area.

Furthermore, the facility also handles warranty returns from customers and has the added capacity to serve a client as a third party logistics provider. Both functions are made easier with the new software.

'The WMS has given us the tools to manage our business,' says Thompson. 'We have a difficult mix to handle, everything from batters' gloves to hockey goals. Just the same, within just a couple of months we surpassed our old throughput numbers.'

An important factor in the selection of the new WMS was that it mirrored much of the feel, functionality and nomenclature of the old software. This made it easier to train workers and ramp up volumes.

Easton began as a manufacturer of aluminum arrow shafts. Its expertise in shaping aluminum allowed it to expand into aluminum baseball and softball bats, golf clubs and other sporting equipment. It is now also the number one supplier of hockey equipment.

The company's biggest seasons are in the early part of the year. During January, February and March, daily throughputs can double at the Salt Lake City DC.

Half of the products received here are manufactured at Easton plants. Archery equipment is made at a factory across the street from the DC, softball and baseball bats are manufactured in California and hockey sticks are made in plants in Vermont and Mexico. Remaining items come from other overseas and domestic vendors.

Product enters the building at five receiving doors. Each stockkeeping unit (SKU) is hand scanned to alert the warehouse management system of arrival. Some of the items are designated for quality assurance. These are individually scanned and inspected.

Other items are manually palletized onto slave pallets according to SKU. A license plate bar code label is printed and attached to the load. A lift truck is then summoned to gather the pallet. Some high cube items, such as hockey nets, are taken from receiving to a bulk storage area in the rear of the building. These large cartons are stacked at floor level.

Most other items are carried to pick up and delivery stations located at the end of the reserve pallet racks. Once deposited, a turret truck is summoned to gather the load from the station and carry it to a storage location as assigned by the WMS. The racks are eight levels high. Upper racks hold reserve items, while the lower two levels house items for active picking. If space is available in the active pick areas, then the load is assigned there. Other-wise, it will be placed in reserve racks above.

Under the old WMS system, products were randomly assigned to storage locations. Now items are stored by product category. This makes picking easier, as orders typically feature like products. This permits faster turns and eliminates much of the sorting and segregating that previously occurred. The turret truck operator scans the load and location upon putaway.

Replenishment of the active slots occurs continuously, as drivers are instructed to pull pallets from upper levels for deposit into the lower level active pick slots.

The WMS enables the same lift unit to handle multiple tasks, providing better utilization of equipment. Ideally, the truck will deposit a load into a rack, then be assigned a replenishment task followed by a full pallet pick from a nearby location.

About 2% of total facility picks are full pallet selections. These are taken immediately to the pick up and delivery stations at the end of the aisles where lift trucks are assigned to gather the loads and carry them to pack stations.

The vast majority of selections, though, are less-than-pallet picks performed by order picker trucks. Thompson is working to drive most of these to the lower levels to utilize pallet jacks instead of the more-expensive order pickers.

Most items are picked-to-order directly onto pallets. Some smaller orders are still batch picked along with similar products and later split at the packing stations into individual orders.

'While we now ship mostly bigger loads, we still ship single items, such as those for warranty replacement,' says Thompson. 'These ship directly to the consumer, and may be one bat or one hockey stick.

'On-board radio frequency units direct picking. Workers scan each case chosen before depositing it onto the order pallet. Split case items are also picked onto the pallet along side full case items. Split case products tend to be small items, such as batter's gloves, baseball mitts and hockey pads. The carton within the rack is opened and the product is removed and placed into a box on the pallet. When possible, empty cartons from the racks are removed and re-used to gather these orders. The individual products will be re-boxed later in the packing area.

Once all picks have been made to the pallet, the driver transports some loads to three value-added stations. Value-added items are removed from cartons, if necessary, and pre-ticketed according to customer specifications. Once completed, these items are palletized and taken to shipping by lift truck.

Products by-passing the value-added area are taken directly from picking to ten pack stations. Here each item is removed from the order pallet and scanned. Individual item scanning is performed to assure accuracy. Some compliant packing and special labeling of items and cartons are also performed here as part of Easton's dedication to customer service. Items are then placed onto shipping pallets. Loose items, such as split case picks, are repacked.

The printed shipping label is placed onto the load, then it is taken to a wrap machine to secure it during transport. Once wrapped, the pallet is loaded onto a trailer parked at one of the facility's 12 outbound docks. The facility ships the archery products worldwide and distributes team sports products throughout the US and the Pacific Rim.

One of the pack stations also serves individual cartons that will be delivered by parcel carriers. These items are placed onto a short conveyor where they pass to a worker who checks the order and creates a packing slip and shipping label. Completed cartons are then placed onto a pallet for later loading into the parcel carrier's truck.

An upper mezzanine area above shipping handles warranty returns. A lift truck raises a pallet of returns to the mezzanine. These products are handled individually and either sent back to the vendor or the materials are recycled. The same mezzanine also holds a small kitting operation. Here bagging of replacement skate blades, pads or other sporting goods takes place. One operation glues hockey blades onto graphite shafts.

While it has been just a year since the facility changeover, Thompson and his staff are very pleased with the performance of the new WMS and the processes it allows.

'It's been dynamic. We continue to surprise ourselves,' he says. 'We have been excited to get a more robust tool that has given us productivity improvements, and our quality has been solid.'

Click on the icon to read MMH's first report on this facility's opening in 1988.