Augmented Reality Meets the Warehouse
Peter Millar, luxury apparel retailer, took a different approach to automating their omni-channel warehouse. They found a way to streamline orders, take 10% load off of their conveyor, dramatically reduce touchpoints, and adapt whenever the business calls for a change. How did they do it? Flexible Automation with LogistiVIEW. Harnessing Augmented Reality smart glasses to reinvent order operations.
The need:
A new picking and sorting process to reduce strain on the conveyor, increase picking speed and accuracy, and reduce audit/pack out labor
The Challenge:
Over Capacity DC: As an omni-channel fulfillment center, Peter Millar’s DC was designed for a peak season e-commerce surge, but no one predicted the incredible growth in sales that Peter Millar achieved in just a few short years.
Picking Inefficiency at Peak and Redundant Touchpoints: Normal operations focused on large retail orders, with e-commerce orders mixed in that actually improved pick density. But at Peak, the opposite occurred, increasing walk times for single picks that would be better batch-picked and post sorted.
Conveyor Congestion: Peak also meant a huge spike in the number of separate outbound boxes – overloading the conveyor, and gridlocking the packing and sorting process.
Cost of Accuracy: As a rule, a congested conveyer leads to product jumping to adjacent cartons, increased pick touchpoints naturally proliferate pick errors, and recirculation leads to audit/packing inefficiency for retail orders
The Solution:
LogistiVIEW’s Vision+ solution provides both visual and voice-based work instructions through a unique combination of Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence, and Computer Vision. Wearing smart glasses, workers see visual instructions shown through AR, with barcode scanning done through the glasses and wearable Bluetooth ring scanners, to collect relevant data and information. The result is a virtual put wall with powerful visuals guiding workers to confidently locate, sort, scan, and fulfill each order accurately and efficiently – every single time. What’s more, the system is flexible to move at any point in time – and no permanent, fixed footprint. And Peter Millar’s investment was one quarter the cost of a traditional put wall.
