How do you succeed when the constraints surrounding a project are so rigid that navigating them feels like fitting a proverbial square peg in a round hole? In a recent project, LogistiVIEW took inspiration from perhaps the most famous real-life example of this conundrum: when NASA’s engineers found a way to rig a square CO2 scrubber to a circular housing in the beleaguered Apollo 13 lunar module.
While the stakes may have been slightly lower in our go-live versus their “stay-alive,” we were certainly motivated to bridge a gap between KSP’s WMS and the Locus Robotic Picking System as quickly as possible. Fortunately, LogistiVIEW’s flexible Warehouse Execution System (WES) made it easy to design, configure, and deploy a solution for this customer-specific process in just 1 week!
The Problem: Customer-Specific Labels
A key aspect of KSP’s competitive advantage in the 3rd Party Logistics (3PL) market is their ability to deliver Value Added Services (VAS) specific to each of their customers. This often includes applying a customer-specific retail label to orders.
“In the past, picking retail labels was entirely a manual process, which added complexity to our operations. Recognizing this, we worked with LogistiVIEW and Locus to integrate label picks into our new robotic system, streamlining the process. Now, not only is one less manual process required, but the system also manages label inventory in real-time. This means our operations team can focus on other critical tasks without having to monitor these locations manually.” – Mike Geiger, Director of IT, KSP Fulfillment
Keeping Up with the Customer Labels
Quickly delivering an easy-to-use solution was made easy due to KSP’s straightforward requirements:
- Add a label pick to each order based on the customer
- Keep track of the label inventory as it’s picked
- Make it easy to manage
Management and maintenance were streamlined by enabling the Operations Team that works directly next to the labels… instead of creating yet another burdensome responsibility for IT! An interactive dashboard allows Managers to view and adjust the inventory levels on the same screen without needing advanced SQL or WMS knowledge. The team can even change the display colors!
Tying everything together on the back end was quick and easy with LogistiVIEW’s flexible platform.
“This was a common sense problem with a common sense solution. The flexibility of LogistiVIEW WES meant there was nothing to stand in the way of delivering that solution.” – Amin Fetanat, Director of Service Delivery, LogistiVIEW
Adhering to Industry Best-Practices
With any LogistiVIEW solution, we adhere to leading industry best practices to achieve optimal results. By utilizing Kanban principles, we ensured that the dashboard is clear, intuitive, and readily accessible. Centralizing the dashboard as the single source for viewing and managing labels has made the process more sustainable and organized—both key components of the 5S methodology. Our focus on Operational Flexibility resulted in a lean process that is manageable by operations without requiring intervention from IT. Finally, the tenets of the Theory of Constraints were a major influence in integrating this label process into the picking operation, rather than the highly constrained shipping area, maximizing throughput.
Post-Mission Report
While LogistiVIEW’s experience implementing this novel label solution may not inspire a blockbuster documentary starring Tom Hanks, we still felt as intrepid as NASA’s engineers working on Apollo 13. We’re especially proud of solving an impactful real-world problem even with numerous constraints imposed by the WMS and automation systems.
Does your business have similar challenges? LogistiVIEW can help you:
- Turn “tribal knowledge” into a directed work stream
- Fill a gap in your WMS or other systems
- Make your automation work for you
…and much more!
To learn more, book a demo with our team, check out the rest of our site, or meet us in-person at an industry event!
