Case Study: Implementing a Pack to Light Solution
in a Major Retail Distribution Center
by Greg Morneau

In the Fall of 2008, the Distribution Center (DC) for our client, a specialty women’s apparel retailer, arranged to install a Pack to Light (PTL) system. Due to the economic down turn, a PTL vendor approached our client and offered very favorable pricing and terms to provide and install the system. The special terms of the offer required a rapid implementation (reduced from 6 months to only two) to begin immediately rather than in the spring or early summer of 2009 as originally scheduled.

The client was motivated by the offer, as the current manual packing operations were a bottleneck to DC throughput. Despite the aggressive schedule, the newly appointed Vice President responsible for Logistics was quick to see the benefits of an early installation. He formed a team charged with making the implementation work. The job became a two-phased effort to install the PTL system in two separate implementations, one before and one after a Distribution Center material handling upgrade.

The results were phenomenal. Throughput increased from 408 units per hour to 598 units per hour in the first month following completion of the install. Order cycle time in the DC was decreased from 8 business days to 1 business day. This paper describes how it was accomplished and how Sekel Associates contributed to the successful implementation of the PTL solution.

The DC Environment Before PTL Installation

The client operates a 165,000 square foot distribution center from which it serves over 800 stores in 2 divisions and 2 ecommerce stores across the United States.

Because there was no WMS system the operations of the DC were supported by a merchandising management system which provided item information, and assisted with purchase order management, receiving and allocations.

The process for picking and packing in the DC was a manual operation. Picking Tickets were still being printed on a dot matrix printer. The absence of a WMS and the manual processes being used in the DC did not support any method of identifying merchandise when it was presented to a pack to light system.