Package & Parcel Distribution Company

3pl parcel and package distribution company case study featured image

Background

In early 2021, Century Conveyor and Lafayette Engineering was approached by an upcoming industry leader with the request of providing a new system for meet their expanding east coast growth.

The goal was to enable the facility to be capable of processing up to 260K cartons per day, including polybags. Century and LEI designed and fulfilled this request. We partnered with Eurosort for Polybags and Hytrol Conveyor for Cartons.

Together with our partners, we implemented and created a seamless flow of products from receiving, capturing weights, dimensions, and barcodes, to outbound destinations. For seamless sortation, our in-house designed LMS Magnetic Divert Switch was implemented in the system – allowing faster response speeds on the Outbound Sorters.

Our ConveyorWorks software team worked with the customer’s WMS to provide a custom solution supporting their on-demand technology requirements to track each package and ensuring that each Carton and Polybag successfully reaching the correct outbound destination, ensuring an on-time delivery to their customers.

In an amazing feat, this facility opened in time for peak season and boasted an output of 266K cartons per day within the first month of becoming fully operational. Since then, this facility has continued to achieve record production numbers, surpassing the original goals and expectations. Century Conveyor and Lafayette Engineering are honored to cultivate growth with this customer and assist with them additional facilities across the U.S.

Goals

Enable both carton and polybag handling and sortation
Integrate high-throughput processing exceeding 260k cartons per day
Interface conveyor system with WMS for expanded tracking and data collection

System Specifications

Engineering and Integration: Century Conveyor Systems and Lafayette Engineering
Conveyor Equipment: Hytrol, FMH, Eurosort, Stewart Glapat
Software and Controls: Lafayette Engineering and Century Conveyor Systems

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Salson Logistics

Background

Salson Logistics is a port-to-shelf 3PL logistics services provider, servicing large retailers and consumer brand products. Their customer-focused capabilities and their desire to provide and accommodate their customer’s needs led them to seek a more automated solution for their warehousing operation.

Salson determined that their most pressing requirements were to increase accuracy and provide not only greater throughput but to be able to accommodate various carton identifiers, while still employing a common software system solution. The Material Handling system solution provided by Century Conveyor provided for an accurate read and receipt of inbound merchandise leading to a cross-dock sortation application, allowing hand palletization as well as direct truck fluid loading.

Challenge

Prior to the automated system, Salson had employed a rather manual process, with very limited conveyor automation. Upon receipt, labels were manually applied. Scanning and sortation were performed manually. All products were then hand palletized prior to disposition. Despite the reliance on manual operations, and multiple shifts, Salson was able to achieve daily volumes of up to 20,000 cartons per day.

Goals

Increase throughput
Increase accuracy
Grow business

System Specifications

5-lane receiving area
Hytrol Prosort 400 Sortation conveyor
Hytrol EZLogic gapping

Integration

The Century team solution provided for all aspects for turn-key development, including such key functions as the warehouse control system, material handling hardware, physical implementation, controls, software, and the engineering and project management disciplines necessary to ensure a timely and correct final commissioning, startup and turnover.

Some of the features of this system include traversing trailer unloaders, allowing five traversing unload conveyors the ability to service multiple inbound dock doors, Receiving scan tunnels, on each pair of receiving lines that allow for the capture of all carton received merchandise, ( can scan all sides of carton except bottom) along with no read divert for correction, right at scan location. 16 cartons per minute rate at each receiving location. Upon receipt, cartons accumulate and are queued up on indexing slug belts prior to a merge point. Five accumulation lanes feeding a merge, provide for an outbound rate of 95 per minute.

Merge releases to a bi-directional slat sorter where cartons are read. Thru the WMS/WCS communication, 95 cartons per minute run through the bidirectional sorter which has 23 left hand palletizing divert lanes and 12 right-hand fluid load truck fill lanes, along with another 10 hand palletizing lanes. Palletizing lanes having provisions for hand scanning with label generation for manifesting.

The Result

The solution Century provided for all aspects of turn-key development, including such key functions as the warehouse control system, material handling hardware, physical implementation, controls, software, and the engineering and project management disciplines necessary to ensure a timely and correct final commissioning, startup and turnover.

SalSon Logistics no longer has to rely on their labor force to sort, scan, and deliver products. Now with an automated system, the company is about to process 100,000 cartons compared to the 20,000 their labor force alone could do. This innovation and others in the system offered savings in labor, speed and accuracy.