Project Description
High Volume Full Truck Load (FTL) Order Fulfillment at Stemilt Growers

The Challenge
To usher in a new era of high-volume operational efficiencies and shipping automation, Stemilt invested in a brand-new distribution center outfitted with automated material handling equipment including a state-of-the-art 15,000 pallet-ASRS to enhance their order fulfillment operations.
Although Stemilt had implemented Oracle WMS in the past, the original implementation project didn’t factor in key high-volume order fulfillment strategies into the design. As a result, warehouse operations were left to create manual overrides to keep up with order demand, leading to inaccurate inventory counts and a system unfit to scale.
The challenge was how do they maximize the new ASRS and Distribution Center investments to reach their operational goals, track real-time material movement, and create better visibility across their entire outbound processes.
The Solution
A 22-week, fixed-price, collaborative implementation, designed and executed by Inyxa’s project team, that included several WMS mobile screens optimized for Stemilt’s warehousing transactions, and a custom-built Warehouse Execution System to control the ASRS and outbound order fulfillment processes.
- A custom-built Warehouse Execution System
- Integrates the ERP (Oracle-E-Business Suite), the WMS, a Labor Tracking system, and the automated material handling system from SwissLog
- Provides visibility and control of all trips and trucks by appointment
- Manages complete control of the ASRS, from releasing tasks to requesting pallet sequences, and routing pallets to output spurs
- Provides visibility and controls of all orders in Oracle, ASRS output spurs and staging lanes, employee resource grid, and dock door management
- A suite of Mobile forms that optimized person-system interaction throughout the distribution center. These mobile screens worked in conjunction with the standard Oracle seeded WMS forms, to provide an optimized user experience.
- Mobile Unified Receiving Form: To expedite and enhance receiving capabilities
- Mobile Unified Put-Away Form: To provide the ability to move all types of orders to various locations throughout the warehouse, from partial pallet storage, to cross-docking, to ASRS input lanes
- Mobile Unified Picking Form: Simplifying and enhancing the order picking process across all order types and locations, including LPN picks with multiple lots in a single scan.
- Mobile Truck Loading Form: To create two-way visibility and efficiency between pallets and assigned trucks
- Mobile In-Transit Form: To provide visibility and tracking while product is in-transit
- Mobile Guided Pallet Consolidation Form: To optimize warehouse storage density and capacity, through an intelligent and complex rules engine.
- Mobile Remove Item from Staged Shipment Form: To create flexibility and real-time traceability when replacing or removing pallets
Results
- Significant improvement in Oracle WMS transactions through the roll-out of mobile screens optimized specifically for Stemilt.
- Better warehouse management and more reactive operations through new Warehouse Execution System to unify operational control
- Real-time visibility for executives into shipment status, truck wait times, and labor productivity
- Truck Loading Time was reduced by 66%. Stemilt now has the ability to load a full truck in less than 30 minutes (from truck check-in to check-out) vs. 90 minutes previously.
- Inspectors can each inspect up to 40 pallets per hour with the new system in place, allowing for a total of 120 pallet inspections per hour with 3 QA stations.
- Quick adoption and easier change management due to key collaborative design decisions and project approach
- Employee stress reduction due to simplified processes and standard hours of operations