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If you feel like everyone you know got a new pet during Covid, you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. The Washington Post reports that “more than 23 million American households—nearly 1 in 5 nationwide—adopted a pet during the pandemic, according to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). But, the pet phenomenon wasn’t limited to the United…
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Pan Pacific Pet Location: Balzac, Alberta Size: 120,000 square feet Throughput: 400 bin presentations an hour Products Handled: High quality pet foods and pet-related accessories SKUS: 18,000 SKUs, with 9,000 handled by Attabotics system Shifts: 2 per day/5 days per week In Pan Pacific Pet’s new distribution center near Calgary, a goods-to-person order fulfillment system automated order picking for about…
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What will the e-commerce distribution center of the future look like? And which of the tools in the automation toolkit might come together to minimize touches as product flows through a building, all while making the best and most productive use of the human component of those operations? Warehouse operators are asking those questions every day as they design new…
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When it comes to the wine and spirits industry, unless you’re a supply chain geek, you probably don’t think a lot about what it takes to get your favorite bottle of wine or bourbon onto the store shelves. As it turns out, it’s a lot. For one, the industry is governed by 50 different sets of regulations in 50 different…
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Editor’s note: This is the second of two columns on the reinvention of Macy Inc.’s retail supply chain. The first part was about inventory productivity. In this one, we look at how the New York-based retailer is incorporating sustainability into its practices and goals. Back in May, I sat in on a roundtable discussion on sustainability at the American Supply…
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Editor’s note: This is the first of two columns on the reinvention of Macy’s retail supply chain. In this one, we look at the department store leader’s focus on inventory productivity. Can a 165-year-old department store chain evolve to meet today’s retail shopper and compete with fast fashion, off-price, and pure e-tailers? And, if so, what is the role of…
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Last month, Pittsburgh-based IAM Robotics introduced a new autonomous mobile robot that takes a different approach to order fulfillment from other solutions on the market, and expands the weight capacity of most AMRs. You can watch a video of the solution here. I have been following IAM since 2015, when the company was little more than a PowerPoint on the…
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If you think of Pitney Bowes as a mailing meter company, you’d be half right. The company has enjoyed a century-long partnership with the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) and is its largest workshare partner, sorting more than 16 billion pieces of mail each year. But while mail metering and services built the company, it’s only half of Pitney Bowes’ revenue…
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Pitney Bowes Lockport, Il Square Footage: About 360,000 square feet Throughput: The facility sorts up to 24,000 parcels per hour for the USPS Shifts: 2 shifts per day, 5 days per week plus one shift on Saturday Read the full lenth article on the upgraded Pitney Bowes distribution center Pitney Bowes’ newest facility in Lockport, Ill., is an example of…
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During a time of supply chain volatility and disruptions, to say nothing of economic uncertainty, Carhartt is contending with a different kind of challenge: The business just keeps growing. And, it’s not just its e-commerce channel; all of Carhartt’s channels are growing. Since 2017, the apparel maker has expanded from one distribution center to five, with a sixth under construction.…
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Carhartt & DHL Supply Chain Canal Winchester (Columbus), Ohio Square Footage: 556,000 square feet Products Handled: Women’s apparel and accessories such as gloves, hats and belts SKUS: More than 40,000 SKUs, of which 11,000 SKUs are managed in Canal Winchester Througput: Between 25,000 to more than 100,000 units in a 24-hour period depending on the season. Shifts: Two 10- to…
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About this time each year, my colleague Roberto Michel begins to put together Modern’s annual list of the Top 20 System Suppliers world wide. It’s purely a numbers game: The companies on the list are ranked by their annual sales and not whether or not we think they’re a great organization. For the past three or four years, we’ve been…
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The stockings were hung by the chimney with care last December at Parts Town’s 200,000-square-foot distribution center in Addison, Ill. OK, that’s a bit of poetic license, but colored Christmas lights were strung overhead along the conveyor system and mezzanines, and snowflakes hung from the ceiling, bringing a little holiday cheer to the DC. “In October, we decorated for Halloween,”…
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Parts Town Addison, Ill. Square Footage: 200,000 square feet plus 50,000 square feet of mezzanine space Products Handled: Critical and spare OEM MRO parts SKUS: 165,000 SKUs in stock, plus access to additional SKUs via partners Throughput: 22,000 lines and 11,000 orders on a typical day People/Shifts: Two 8-hour shifts per day/5 days per week plus one shift on Saturday…
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At ProMat 2023, I had a fascinating conversation with Brett Wood, the president and CEO of Toyota Material Handling North America. He noted that if you based your view of the economy on television news, you’d think we’re in the doldrums. Now, the long-predicted recession may be coming – we’ve never had this many consecutive years of growth without a…
From geometry preparation to AI-assisted analysis, integrated CFD workflows…
Software-based GripperAI manages mixed picking through basic geometry
Safety, communication and motion control components enable smooth operation
North America’s largest robotics and automation event winds down
