In May, S&S Activewear announced an expansion of its partnership with Körber Supply Chain, which deployed robots from Geekplus Technology Co. at three warehouses across the Americas.
The Bollingbrook, Ill.-based apparel distributor said it wanted to optimize its on-site staff, order quality, and delivery efficiencies to meet market demands.
Körber started with 340 Geek+ autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) at a single 750,000-sq.-ft. (69,677-sq.-m) S&S Activewear site in Lockport, Ill.
Brian Beale, chief technology officer of S&S Activewear, and Cole Lohman, director of automation at S&S Activewear, described how they scaled the AMR implementation with Automated Warehouse.
S&S Activewear evaluated automation for a decade
Did S&S Activewear have experience with robotics and automation prior to its collaboration with Körber and Geek+?
Beale: Our Lockport distribution center features our first robotics and automation deployment, but the S&S team has been evaluating a robotics and automation strategy for more than a decade. Investing in and advancing our technological prowess has been a core tenet of our business strategy since S&S’s earliest days.
The latest developments in automated storage and retrieval are very exciting and made a prospective partnership with Körber and Geek+ very attractive to us.
What were your biggest pain points? What kinds of goods or packaging needed to be handled?
S&S Activewear
Beale: The entire technology team at S&S worked very closely with Körber and Geek+ to design a highly customized automation system. The nature of our product is interesting—it’s not barcoded or easily handled, and our demand model is structured to ship out orders the same day they are placed.
Our robotics technology can help streamline the picking process and reduce “touches” in the process, which helps our business be even more efficient. That makes a PopPick system very appealing, but challenging to configure since the technology needs to be able to balance pick efficiency and order deadlines.
How did your prior evaluation and experience with these partners inform your plans?
Lohman: This was our first major collaboration with these partners, and it has been a very positive experience.
AMR deployment needed speed
How long did deployment take, and how much training did your staff require?
Lohman: At S&S, we don’t have a lot of flexibility for downtime, given the fast-paced nature of our business. We worked very quickly with our partners to deploy the automation technology as fast as possible, which worked well for us.
It took us about six months to go live, we ramped for an additional three and spent about two weeks training our entire staff.
How much integration was necessary with existing systems, processes, or software?
Lohman: S&S uses a proprietary ERP [enterprise resource planning] system created by Brian, our CTO. Given we use a custom warehouse management system [WMS], there was a good amount of integration required with Körber’s software and Geek+’s technology.
However, we have a nimble and hands-on technology team that walks the floor at our distribution centers and looks for ways to help make S&S more efficient. It has an innate understanding of how our processes work, and it can identify opportunities for efficiencies and generate code on the spot.
Since our team has developed processes in-house, this integration was a fairly straightforward process with our partners’ support.
Did you learn anything during this deployment that perhaps you didn’t expect to learn?
Lohman: There’s only so much preparation and modeling you can do before deployment. You need to move forward with the live application to discover what details need tweaking — and every detail matters.
There were unknowns that we had to tackle in near real time: Everything from ensuring the physical robots were functioning seamlessly to the balance between robots and pickers and the configuration of communications between servers.
As the system rolled out, we were agile and pivoted to address issues as they came up. This active and adaptive approach really helped us successfully navigate bumps in the implementation process. Partnering with the right people really does make a difference and is a huge reason for our success.
Körber and Geek+ improve order accuracy
How much did Geek+’s systems improve efficiency or throughput, and when do you expect a return on investment (ROI)?
Lohman: There are four major factors we are evaluating as our automation strategy evolves: productivity, safety, training and order accuracy.
Order accuracy is where we’ve seen great progress thus far, and where we know our customers will feel the benefit. For example, the new automated process for box putaway and selection significantly reduces errors in comparison to the manual process. Greater consistency in our warehouse processes leads to increased picking accuracy and minimized quality-control issues.
What’s your arrangement for ongoing service and support with Körber and Geek+? Are you using a robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) model?
Lohman: We are not using a robotics-as-a-service model.
We have built out an internal hardware support staff that partners directly with Körber for ongoing software support and enhancements.
S&S Activewear plans to grow robot fleet
Do you expect to grow S&S Activewear’s fleet past 340 Geek+ AMRs, and will you use PopPick systems at more sites?
Beale: Absolutely. We’re in the process of rolling this system out to the majority of our warehouses throughout the U.S. over the next year. We are planning to go live in two more sites in 2024 and three in 2025.
Where could robots help that they don’t currently?
Beale: One of S&S’s core values is continuous improvement. We are committed to thoughtful innovation to ensure our customers get the best experience possible. That value rings true in our partnership with Körber and Geek+ as well.
Our business model is complex—we have elaborate orders with tens of thousands of available SKUs. Most of our customers are B2B, so many are interested in our comprehensive catalog—that means they’re potentially ordering dozens to hundreds of line items at a time, making us a unique e-commerce business.
The robotics and automation solutions we are deploying are rapidly developing technologies, and we’re constantly looking for ways to strengthen our existing implementation and find new ways to sharpen our system.
