Return-on-investment is critical to automation projects, but justification isn’t straightforward. If you’re trying to convince management to make capital improvements to your operation, a smart, accurate and succinct ROI summary can work wonders. Let’s dive into some methods you can use to understand what to do — and what you can’t quantify.
Read the rest of this entry »

With e-commerce operations moving at an ever-increasing pace, you must take every advantage to meet consumer expectations. You not only want to save the customer time on their order, but also gain manufacturing and processing time by doing so. With careful consideration and a robust process, each aspect at play in a distribution center or warehouse could be an opportunity to save seconds.

To maximize every advantage, more facilities are turning towards automation to meet those strong demands. By utilizing automation, a distribution center can provide a more flexible and efficient environment in addition to more accurate orders delivered on time. The ability to scale and grow with automation is also an attractive one. But to jump headfirst into the automation process is a daunting task, and can cause an operations manager cause for concern. Two overlooked areas that can become a “tipping point” for this process are mezzanines and VRCs.

Read the rest of this entry »

Next month, Cisco-Eagle will be exhibiting at Parcel Forum 2019. We are at booth 340 and will showcase our systems group and their innovative solutions for your operations.

Read the rest of this entry »

Conveyors–as we’ve discussed–have two major costs:

1. The cost of conveyor hardware, which should include installation.
2. The cost of operations, which should include maintenance, repair and energy consumption.

When you invest in capital equipment, you should be as focused on operational costs as purchase price. Part of that is extending the life of your conveyor system. How can you make sure you get the most out of your conveyors?

Read the rest of this entry »

Cisco-Eagle designed and implemented a modern order fulfillment system for Educational Development Corporation that dramatically increased order picking speed, reduced errors and allowed the company to expand. In this video, EDC’s Randall White, Jimmy Cleveland and Craig White explain why partnership with Cisco-Eagle and Hytrol was so critical to the project’s success.

Read the rest of this entry »

Once an afterthought in the warehouse, vertical carousels are being reborn in the omnichannel age as a fulfillment finish line product. Retailers are eyeing carousels to help them aid in customer retrieval of picked orders shipped to a retail location, which is giving the carousel a “moment” as a new last-mile darling. Whether located in the back of the store for employees to use, or at the front for customers to pick up themselves, vertical carousels are showing to be a good fit for this new age of sales. But don’t sleep on their value in industrial settings or distribution channels.

Read the rest of this entry »

The advantages of pick-to-light for order fulfillment are well-documented: you can pick faster and more accurately without the burden of tickets or voice-activated systems. Your workforce can be trained in a fraction of the time, in a “fast food” type experience. It’s a technology that has found broader applications in many distribution centers simply because it’s a fast, easy way to improve.

Light-directed systems may have a more positive impact on assembly than they do on order picking.

Read the rest of this entry »

A research paper was released last month by two Harvard labor economists highlighted one of the coming decade’s most interesting talking points: the automated labor of the future. We are no strangers to the unique opportunities that adding robots can provide. What this paper sought to do was estimate the current effect of the introduction of robots on wages and employment, while also focus on the future they pose in industrial and manufacturing economies.

With this kind of research being conducted (with many more studies to be revealed for sure) and a spotlight put on the future robotic workforce, many with facilities that could use their services would be wise to discover how they can benefit. But what, exactly, should you be looking for?

Read the rest of this entry »

Sorting, pushing and diverting products as they are transported on a conveyor system is one of the best ways to reduce costs, improve fill rates, eliminate errors and increase throughput — and there are multiple ways to go about it. Some systems are downright plodding–pushing only a few loads per minute–while others are dizzyingly fast, pushing out hundreds of diverts per minute. This post will profile some of the lower to medium speed options at your disposal.

Read the rest of this entry »

The shift from traditional retail to ecommerce is accelerating, and with that growth there are both challenges and opportunities for order fulfillment operations. Companies that spent decades perfecting retail distribution (large, bulk orders to a network of stores) are shifting toward direct-to-consumer shipments that are orders of magnitude more difficult to manage.

Among other things, this means that ecommerce companies must focus on optimal packaging. At Modex 2018, an industry expert panel including Hytrol’s Boyce Bonham discussed these issues.

Read the rest of this entry »