Boscov's sort of success: A look inside the warehouse

More dock doors and a sorter enable this retailer to ship out about 25% more cartons per day than it receives during peak periods.

By Bob Trebilcock, Editor at Large -- Modern Materials Handling, 6/1/2008

The receiving process begins with the electronic transmission of an advanced shipment notice (ASN) prior to a delivery. When a truck arrives at Boscov's receiving area (1), the shipping documents are verified against the ASN, and the truck is unloaded.

Floor-loaded cartons are manually placed onto an extendable conveyor that reaches into trailers or overseas containers for easy unloading. From there, cartons travel to the pallet and carton processing area (2), where they are placed on a conveyor (3). Pallets, meanwhile, are delivered to workstations in the pallet processing area (2). There, cartons are manually unloaded from the pallets onto a conveyor.

In both cases, once cartons are on the conveyor, they pass through an automatic scan tunnel (4). A bar code label scan determines the disposition for that carton. The cartons then travel by conveyor to a divert area (5).

Depending on the season, as much as 75% of the product is pre-allocated to a specific store and will be crossdocked directly to a pre-sort area (6). There, cartons are divided between several shipping sorters: One sorter services 12 store lanes (7) and the other sorter services 46 store lanes (7).

As the cartons travel into the sortation system, pop up diverts send the cartons into a chute representing a specific store. They are then floor loaded onto an outbound truck in the shipping area (8).

Cartons that are not crossdocked can be sent to one of three areas for quality assurance (9), value-added services (10) or storage (11). In all three cases, cartons are staged before delivery into the work area.

Value-added processes: The value-added processing areas (10) are reserved for non-compliant product that comes in without the appropriate value-added service functions completed by the vendor. In addition, any product that was purchased as part of an opportunistic buy requiring additional services (re-ticketing, post-distribution, hanger insertion, etc.) is also directed to these areas.

Storage and replenishment: During peak seasons, most inventory is crossdocked. However, more than half the imported product for the summer patio and Christmas season is held in an adjacent storage and replenishment area (11). Cartons can be stored on racks or on the floor. Associates choose the putaway location based on available slots, then scan a location bar code to confirm the putaway in the warehouse management system (WMS). Picking is a reverse of the putaway process. Associates receive picking instructions on a vehicle-mounted or handheld scanner. Cartons are scanned as they are picked to a conveyor or to a pallet. Some bulk receiving (12) is also handled in this same area.

Once a QA, value-added or pick processes are complete, cartons are returned to the induction point for the conveyor (3) and diverted (5) to the pre-sort area (6). Like crossdocked cartons, they are then sorted to the shipping system, where they are sorted to one of the shipping sorters (7). Cartons are then diverted to a chute at a shipping lane (8) and loaded onto a truck for delivery to a store.

Boscov's Department Store

• Reading, Pa.
• Size: 395,000 square feet plus attached 85,000 square foot building for stock replenishment
• SKUs: 8,000
• Throughput: 200,000 cartons per week receiving/250,000 cartons per week shipping
• Employees: 325
• Shifts: 2 shifts, 5 days

How Boscov's breaks bottlenecks

High speed sortation and additional dock doors help this retailer deal with a good problem to have: continuing growth.Click to continue