After experiencing years of steady growth and increasing volumes, The Washington State Liquor Control Board needed to replace its aging distribution center (DC). The new facility, built on the same site as the original DC, has improved service to the state's liquor stores, increased accuracy dramatically, improved information gathering and management, reduced damage and improved ergonomics.

This highly automated facility (FKI Logistex) provides efficient processing of products for 360 stores, including state-owned, contract and tribal stores, as well as military posts. It replaces a facility built in 1947 that relied extensively on manual processes.

'Our other system was very labor intensive and that resulted in a lot of injuries,' says Gene Kremer, general manager of the new DC. 'We wanted to build a modern facility that would be more ergonomic and could carry us into the future.'

The average case in the DC weighs about 35 pounds. Lifting thousands of these daily used to take its toll on the workers in the old facility, which relied on hand picking from pallets and racks onto conveyors and carts.

'It was a lot of lifting, pulling, picking and handling,' adds Kremer. 'Moving to a more automated system was one of the mandates from our board.'

A key ingredient to reducing injuries is the use of automated horizontal carousels. The 28 units hold nearly 19,500 cases that account for 75% of the volume processed within the facility.

'The system makes good use of vertical space,' says Kremer. 'We also have a lot of flexibility with what we can put in there.'

The automatic carousels are stacked on two levels totaling 40 feet high. Full cases of liquors, as well as split case bottles picked the day before into totes, are dynamically stored within the carousels. The system's 14 extractors, each serving both a lower and upper carousel, swiftly insert and retrieve required cases. When a particular stock keeping unit (SKU) is needed for a store order, one of the carousels will spin to the location of the product. The extractor moves vertically, similar to an elevator, to the storage position and grabs the case from the tray. It then quickly transports it up or down to an output station where it gently transfers the case to a takeaway conveyor.

In addition to the automatic carousels, the facility also contains man-up turret trucks, manual carousels, deck accumulation lanes, a split-case processing area, de-palletizing stations, three sliding shoe sorters and a new warehouse management system (WMS) that directs operations.

Together, these systems and the associated materials handling equipment have created new efficiencies that have resulted in greater productivity. In addition, fill rate has risen from about 90% in the old building to 98% now. Each of the systems and equipment types has raised the bar in both areas in their specific areas of use in the DC.

The turret trucks perform putaway and retrieval of pallets within the narrow-aisle rack storage. The 80-foot long racks can hold 585,000 cases.

Slow-moving cases are stored in the six manual carousels. They are called 'manual' here because a worker deposits and removes items from them, as opposed to the mechanical extractors found in the automatic carousels. Items in the manual carousels are selected to carts using pick-to-light. The carts are then wheeled to staging areas until married up with other parts of each store order.

The 22 fastest-moving full case SKUs are sent to the deck accumulation lanes, located on a mezzanine level. These basically are holding areas consisting of 33 rows of roller conveyor. Pop-up diverters direct incoming product into the proper lane where it is staged until needed for an order. At that time, cases are automatically released one at a time and conveyed to the shipping sorter. This area processes about 20% of the facility's volume.

Individual bottles are picked into totes in the split case area, located below the deck accumulation lanes. This area holds 600 SKUs in 812 pick faces.

Radio frequency data communication (RFDC) units direct picking according to store orders from two lanes of flow racks. Each tote holds about 12 bottles. Once selected, the totes are conveyed to the automatic carousels and held there until each store is ready to ship.

Cartons needed to replenish the carousels and split case area are brought from reserve storage to the five de-palletizing stations. Lift trucks drop pallets onto conveyors that carry them to scissor lifts. The lifts raise the pallet loads to upper levels where workers label and then manually strip off cartons a layer at a time. The lifts keep work at an ideal height, improving productivity through better ergonomics. If a full pallet is not needed, then the lift is lowered and the pallet is returned by lift truck to storage.

The three sliding shoe sorters serve replenishment to the forward picking areas, input into the automatic carousels and to the shipping docks.

The information systems, including the WMS, provide paperless processing, and management tools to track employee productivity.

'We also have better information now with real-time systems,' says Mike Wolfe, facilities coordinator. 'With our old systems, we relied on sales data to show what we were shipping.'

Such information is especially helpful to liquor suppliers, who stock the facility on a consignment basis and do not get paid until the product actually ships to the stores.

'We can accurately track products now from the time cases come in until they go out and hit the stores,' adds Kremer.

The stores themselves have also moved to RFDC systems to do receiving. The DC now electronically sends shipping data to the stores. Once product arrives, the stores then use wireless scanners to verify the receipts.

'Our stores also have a higher trust level with us,' adds Kremer. 'They used to overstock their stores because they did not have confidence that they would receive their products on time. Now they trust us to get it to them and have reduced their inventory levels. So far, we are exceeding our expectations here.'

Click the icon to read how Castleton Beverage installed a new palletizing system for distribution of their Bacardi liquor brands.