Two vertical carousels allow faster order fulfillment with increased capacity

Founded in 1926 and still family owned, Heyco Products designs and manufactures molded wire-protection products and stamped electrical components. The company allows customers to request complimentary samples online, requiring the manufacturing facility in Toms River, N.J., to inventory more than 18,000 sample SKUs. Using two vertical carousels to stock, manage, pick and ship sample inventory, the company increased storage 167% in the same footprint.

The new vertical carousels (Kardex Remstar, kardexremstar.com) replaced two 20-year-old carousels. “They were getting stuck quite often, requiring us to shut them down and power them back up again. This frequent downtime was making it more and more time consuming to fill sample orders,” says Colleen Faulknor, vice president of administration at Heyco. “With regularly scheduled maintenance, we’ve had zero unplanned downtime.”

Heyco is filling roughly the same number of sample orders as before, but they are able to fill them in less time. The samples clerk is able to assist in the shipping department once he has filled all of the sample orders.

The vertical carousels stand 24 feet tall and are configured with carriers and totes. The previous carousels were 20 feet tall and provided 1,792 storage locations. The new carousels provide 4,788 storage locations. “With that additional capacity we’ve gained, we will be able to sustain years of additional growth in our sample program,” Faulknor says.

When a sample order is received on the Heyco Web site, the operator prints out a label for the order. The label indicates the sample requested as well as the carrier number within the carousel. The clerk uses the touch-screen controller to rotate the carousel, picks the sample requested, bags it and tags it with the order label.

The operator then completes the shipping paperwork and ships the part. When sample quantities are low, the operator puts in a request to manufacturing and additional quantities are added to the next production order for that part.