Bardwil Industries receives approximately 300 shipping containers from Taiwan, India and China each year. The receiving process begins when a receiving supervisor downloads a packing slip from the warehouse management system (WMS), which details the contents of the container.

Cartons are unloaded onto gravity-fed flexible conveyor in the receiving area. Bar code labels are applied to the cartons, which are manually sorted onto permanent pallets by SKU, color and size. As pallets are built, an associate scans the carton label and the license plate label on the pallet. The product is now ready for putaway in one of 6,500 pallet and lift truck driver scans the label on a pallet, the WMS chooses a storage location. The driver, however, has the option of over-riding the system. Once a location is chosen, the driver confirms putaway by scanning the location label on the rack and the pallet label. The inventory is now available in the WMS for order fulfillment.

Order fulfillment begins when orders are downloaded into the WMS from the host system. After bar code labels are printed, a supervisor creates picking waves.

About 10% of orders include price ticketing. Those items are picked from a pull list and delivered to a value-added services area. There, associates add price tickets and re-bag the products, which are then sent back to a picking area. An associate scans the ticketed items and places them into shipping cartons. Once a carton is full, it travels by powered roller conveyor to a weighing and taping station.

While some seasonal items are still scanned, most picking is directed by the pick-to-light system. To begin the process, bar code labels are applied to shipping cartons. Each label includes a color-coded dot that represents a specific DC. The dot will be used later to build pallets for shipping.

The labeled cartons are delivered to one of three picking areas. An associate scans a picking area location label, and then scans each of the cartons in order. With that information, the system is now ready to direct picking.

At the first station, the pick-to-light system tells the associate how many of which items to pick to the carton. Once the items from that station have been placed in the container, it is passed by gravity conveyor to the next associate. Once all the items have been picked for an order, the carton is pushed from the gravity conveyor onto the powered roller conveyor, which delivers it to a weighing and taping station.

The WMS calculates the shipping weight for each container. At the weighing station, the scale compares the actual weight with the estimated weight. If the weight is within pre-determined tolerances, the order is accepted as correct and automatically sealed at a tape sealer. The carton is now ready to be shipped.

At the end of the conveyor, cartons are manually palletized in the receiving area for a specific DC based on the color-coded dot. Once a pallet is built, it's staged in the shipping area until it's loaded for shipment.