Destination Maternity’s WES improves warehousing throughput and capacity

When Destination Maternity, the world’s largest designer and retailer of maternity apparel, approached the materials handling industry for solutions to its distribution challenges, it received a series of patchwork solution options that involved the integration of disparate warehouse management system (WMS) and warehouse control system (WCS) solutions, but promised little in the way of comprehensive support.

However, one company proposed a solution in which it took responsibility for all aspects of system design, implementation, integration and support—while using its own warehouse execution system (WES) software to handle all aspects of Destination Maternity’s retail and wholesale distribution, e-commerce fulfillment and reverse logistics processing.

A year and a half after choosing the solution—and just two weeks after the system start-up—Destination Maternity used its new omni-channel fulfillment center to process some of the heaviest inbound receipts and outbound shipments in the company’s history.

While processing more than 400,000 units daily, Destination Maternity’s WES orchestrates simultaneous execution of the company’s processes—from receiving and inventory management through order fulfillment and shipping.

As it integrates complete WMS and WCS functionality into one comprehensive system, the WES also features a waveless order fulfillment methodology that dynamically deploys in-motion inventory, while assigning labor and equipment to continuously fill orders as processing resources become available.

Furthermore, the system’s innovative design eliminates the manual picking process and associated batching that is found in traditional fulfillment operations and replaces it with a fully automated solution, in which single SKU totes are automatically delivered directly to sorter induction, as required for order fulfillment.

Beyond realizing a 36% reduction in labor and a 7% reduction in freight charges, Destination Maternity has also seen system-related improvements, including an 80%, 55% and 240% increase in efficiency in its receiving, wholesale picking and e-commerce fulfillment processes, respectively.

In addition, the new system dramatically improves throughput, capacity and time to fulfillment. It is flexible and dependable and, as a result, has enabled Destination Maternity to take a more strategic approach to merchandising, marketing and product development.

Invata Intralogistics
860-819-3200