Tag: software|warehouse|wms

Gnarlywood Group, a provider of complete backend merchandising fulfilment solutions for entertainment brands, has selected inVia Logic AI-powered warehouse execution system (WES) software to modernise its warehouse in Carlsbad, California, USA.

The software will bring immediate picking and replenishment productivity gains that will later be increased with the addition of inVia Picker autonomous mobile robots.

Gnarlywood has seen unprecedented growth in demand for its entertainment merchandise and has chosen inVia’s software to bring efficiency to its fulfilment processes. The system will identify the ideal slotting of inventory at all times, direct pickers to follow the most efficient pick paths, and coordinate the movement of all goods, people and equipment to ensure continuous order flow. All of these improvements are part of inVia’s software-only implementation, which it says delivers 2-3x increases in productivity over manual processes.

inVia, a provider of next-generation e-commerce warehouse automation solutions, designed its technology so it can be brought into a warehouse’s operations at a pace that’s right for each individual business. AI-powered software is easily integrated into legacy systems with a proprietary translation tool, inVia Connect. The same intelligence used to direct robots to pick with machine precision can first be applied to an existing workforce to help people operate at peak productivity.

Gnarlywood has chosen to bring the benefits of inVia Logic to its team to immediately ramp up and keep pace with growth. It will later augment that labour with inVia Picker robots as it expands capacity with new mobile fulfilment centres that are ideal sites for mobile robots. This system enables scale and flexibility as e-commerce demand patterns shift over time.

“We needed a technology partner that could deliver immediate productivity gains, as well as a path to full warehouse automation in parallel with our plans for business growth. inVia provides a unique solution that includes the most advanced warehouse technology and the ability for us to integrate it over time with maximum benefit and minimal disruption,” said Dayton Hicks, founder and chief executive officer at Gnarlywood. “We have big expansion plans and want a partner that can ensure we’re always benefitting from the most advanced technology. We knew we found that with inVia.”

Founded in 2012, Gnarlywood manages e-commerce fulfilment for some of the world’s biggest entertainment brands. It manages storage, customisation, value-added services, marketing, and shipping for a variety of products – from apparel to one-of-a-kind memorabilia. The variety of products and services it offers demands a flexible fulfilment process that can handle complexity.

“inVia’s scalable system will dramatically improve Gnarlywood’s order fulfilment productivity and accuracy, enabling their business to keep up with growing customer demand,” said Lior Elazary, co-founder and chief executive officer of inVia Robotics. “The flexible nature of inVia’s system allows for quick implementation and the ability to adapt as business needs change. We’re excited to become a partner to Gnarlywood as their business scales.“

SnapFulfil WMS is helping to power forward an automotive salvage specialist’s ambitious five-year growth plan, which is predicted to boost turnover to a £1/4 billion.

Charles Trent Ltd, based in Poole, Dorset and founded in 1926, is among the UK’s top three car recycling companies, with a thriving online parts business, but its labour intensive and unreliable, paper picking process wasn’t geared up for quick expansion.

Having invested £4million in a new 30,000 sq ft distribution centre at the start of the year, Charles Trent also ensured that an architecturally robust, highly flexible and easily configurable WMS was part of the digital infrastructure.

The new DC facility is 14 levels high and has top picking height of 13 metre and state of the art racking. Their high-tech operation has been influenced by Amazon, and is the only one of its kind in the country, where you can source a particular part online and then have it delivered next day.

Despite the pandemic challenges SnapFulfil WMS has been able to drive highly accurate storage, putaway, picking and packing via the RF scanners and massively improve visibility for all parties across unique and diverse product ranges.

Charles Trent’s Distribution & Operations Manager, Matthew Groves, says: “We used to have return issues and about 2-3 orders per day going astray within the old system, but we’re now achieving close to 100 per cent accuracy with SnapFulfil and we’re only just getting started. Full traceability like this is a real benefit in a variable business such as ours.”

“The storage and distribution transition from the old warehouse and processes to the new, digitally-driven distribution centre has also been pretty seamless.”

By the end of April ‘21 Charles Trent will be fully operational from the new DC, which currently has capacity for 60,000 ‘green’ recycled products, ranging from used components such as engines and gearboxes to small parts and interiors. With SnapFulfil’s assistance, 110,000 parts should be processed in and out during 2021, increasing to 170,000 in 2022.

Company resource is also much more streamlined, efficient and productive with the new DC in operation 18 hours daily, across two shifts – for a massive increase in order processing capacity, but without the need for additional resource.

Groves adds: “One of the other main reasons we chose SnapFulfil is its ability to scale with us and its flexibility to meet all of the ongoing and future demands of our business. The kitting functionality is great and can support rapid scaling of fulfilment processes, as well as multiple site facility rollouts.”

Another five potential new sites are due to open by 2026, all close to main population centres in areas such as the North, Midlands, South West, plus London and the South East, which will include both distribution and recycling centres.

 

Luxury and collectable online watch retailer, Watch Gang, is clocking up record shipments thanks to its investment in a new advanced, cloud-based WMS. The fast growing e-commerce retailer is handling thousands of closed tab shipments and subscription orders in days – rather than weeks – since its move to a new 10,000 sq.ft warehouse in Los Angeles included onboarding functionally rich and highly configurable SnapFulfil.

And the entire process was managed remotely, overcoming all the Covid-19 restrictions from travel to social distancing, saving both valuable time and money. SnapFulfil’s Remote Implementation (RI) program provides tailored virtual support, including regular online training and status meetings, to ensure new client teams can easily access and rigorously test the system in real time and advance – so meeting strict Go Live deadlines.

Watch Gang’s SVP Operations, Sam Christian, said: “The SnapFulfil team’s attention to detail is first rate and very personalised and you would never guess RI is a relatively new concept. It seems like they’ve been doing it all their working lives, it’s so slick and efficient. I can’t believe they’ll ever see the need to do on-site implementation again.

“When most things passed through the new WMS after Go Live, incremental volume went through the roof and without SnapFulfil I’d have manually been processing those orders weeks later. Quite frankly I would never have caught up. “Their WMS is everything we were hoping for; it manages and solves our specific issues and problems very well and tells us exactly what is where and the right quantities. For example, there’s been a perfect count on SKUs from day one and not a miss-shipment since.”

SnapFulfil’s RI is a formal, approved document that guides both project execution and control and from the outset makes all stakeholders and personnel aware of the key milestones to be achieved and signed off along the way.

SnapFulfil’s Project Manager, Charles Thompson, added: “RI has really come into its own over the past 12 months as the pandemic has turned the idea of business as usual on its head. At SnapFulfil we have always been disruptors in a traditional space and this has worked in our favour as the flexibility, scalability and ease of use of our WMS has meant that a rapidly expanding business like Watch Gang has been able to pivot and meet demand for its luxury watches with a superior customer fulfilment experience without delay.”