In the October 2017 issue, Modern Materials Handling magazine examines how the pressure to keep up with Amazon’s same-day/next-day delivery customer service commitments is forcing smaller e-commerce and omni-channel retailers to seek order fulfillment help from third-party logistics and fulfillment (3PL) service providers.
Among the companies featured is Capacity LLC, a Lightning Pick customer who utilizes the brand’s mobile automated light-directed pick carts and put walls to boost throughput and accuracy while serving the needs of multiple customers.
Capacity’s Chief Strategy Officer Thom Campbell explains how the Lighting Pick installation delivers better picking speed, accuracy and throughput with fewer touches, noting: “With paper picking, we had six eyes on each order: a picker, a packer and a quality control supervisor who confirmed the right units were picked.”
Post-installation, Capacity’s associates now handle 12,000-plus orders in a normal shift—an increase over their previous rate of 2,500. “On a maximum throughput day, working shifts around the clock, we get as many as 1,000 e-commerce orders through the put wall in any given hour,” says Campbell, who added the system’s high accuracy also eliminated visual checks of each order, saving time.
The entire article, “Retailers Use 3PLs to Chase Amazon,” can be read here.
