Fender Musical Instruments has an unbelievably cool corporate vision: "To champion the spirit of rock 'n' roll throughout the world."

And Fender distributes the tools of rock 'n' roll to music stores around the world—from Soho Soundhouse in London to Larry's Music Center in Wooster, Ohio—from a single distribution center in Ontario, Calif. (For more on this DC, see "Hitting the right note.")

The process begins when Fender receives containers and truckloads of guitars and amplifiers at its receiving docks. The products are manually sorted, palletized, bar code labeled and scanned for receiving into the warehouse management system (WMS).

A sampling of the products are diverted to quality inspection stations, where technicians—all of whom are trained guitarists—tune and play the guitars and check the sound quality of the amps.

"You can't plug these into a computer and do a diagnostic," says Fender's senior vice president of logistics Ralph Thomas. "This isn't a car; it's a musical instrument.

The WMS then directs product putaway:

• High-end guitars and amps made in Fender's North American factories arrive in less-than-pallet loads and go directly into a floor-level pick module. Thomas calls this module the "bookshelf" because guitar boxes are stored side-by-side vertically like books in a library.
• Full pallet loads of guitars and amps arriving from Asia are placed in very-narrow-aisle storage. Those products are later used to replenish pick locations in the bookshelf, as directed by the WMS.

Order picking happens in one batch each morning. Order pickers receive sheets of labels that direct them to picking locations in the pick module. Because each product is in its own box, the picking label can act as a shipping label and packing slip. The all-in-one label is printed with a human-readable pick location, a bar code for sorting, all the necessary shipping information and a peel-away section with the purchase order number and part number that customers use as their packing slip.

After pulling a product from the shelf, the order picker applies the label and places the box on powered takeaway conveyor. The box goes up to one of four accumulation lanes, over a scale (to check for order accuracy), through a scanner and then to a narrow-belt sorter where it is diverted down one of 11 lanes for shipping.

Strings, guitar parts and other accessories (such as guitar straps and Fender t-shirts) are stored in a three-level pick module on the far end of the DC.

Order picking—in multiple batches each day—is a pick-and-pass operation with plastic totes traveling down from the top floor of the pick module. Order pickers scan the bar codes printed on their pick lists and then scan items to confirm their picks. When their portion of an order is complete, they place the tote on the takeaway conveyor, which carries it to the next pick zone.

When the tote leaves the last pick zone, it is conveyed to a packing station, where an employee packs the order into a carton, weighs it as a quality-control check and labels it for shipping. A conveyor then carries the carton up to the accumulation lanes.

These boxes of small items are then sorted for shipping along with the larger guitars and amplifiers.

Completed orders leave Fender's shipping docks bound for music stores across the globe.