YAMAYA Shoryu Corporation - Ten-year-old Distribution Center Renovation Meets Demands of Added Retailers And Small Lot Delivery To Improve Shipping Throughput
With over 250 stores, YAMAYA Corporation is Japan’s largest liquor retailer. In November 2007, YAMAYA Shoryu Corporation, which runs the YAMAYA distribution operation, improved shipping throughput by expanding their automated material handling systems. The changes enabled YAMAYA to efficiently respond to an increasing number of direct-to-customer and small lot orders as well as orders requiring less lead time.
Today, the ten-year-old distribution center handles twice the number of stores and ships nine times the product it did when it first opened. In addition, products are now delivered on roll-box-pallets containing cases of collapsible containers rather than traditional pallets.
The facility has double the sorting chutes, a new depalletizer, and a digital pick-to-light system. The enhanced equipment in the distribution center enables the company to improve efficiency at the retail level.
The large-scale distribution center opened in 1996
Tohoku Distribution Center was established in June 1996 to consolidate 10 warehouses and distribution centers into one highly automated facility. This change produced the industry’s largest distribution center in Japan. Since then, the distribution system has been upgraded as YAMAYA expanded its stores throughout the country. Although there are three other distribution centers in Japan, Tohoku is the main facility.
Automation plays a key role in the Tohoku distribution center because it handles a large variety of low-volume products such as wine, beer, and food items. Additionally, load sizes are diverse, items are heavy and fragile, and products vary according to season. The distribution center contains the following Daifuku equipment: unit load Automated Storage & Retrieval System (AS/RS), Sorting Transfer Vehicles (STVs), a mini load AS/RS, and a Jet Surfing Sorter (JSUS).
The automated material handling system was reconstructed to fill small lot orders
In an effort to improve the throughput, the number of the JSUS chutes increased from 13 to 28. The company also introduced a face depalletizer to automatically put cases onto the JSUS one by one before sorting and a digital pick-to-light system (DPS) that handles piece items such as liquor and food.
The legacy system was constructed mainly for large lot shipping. In the system, received products were stored in the unit load AS/RS after inspection and most of the products were retrieved by pallet via STVs. Small lot products were stored temporarily in the mini load AS/RS after being picked by case on the second floor from the unit load AS/RS. Products ready for shipment were then placed onto the JSUS and sorted for per destination.
Amid the ongoing trend of providing high SKUs with low-volume to meet retailer needs and small lot orders, both case picking from pallet and piece picking (such as shipping one bottle of liquor) were performed manually. However, when the number of items increased to over 5,000 (with most items being destined for small lot orders), the company had met their shipping throughput limit.
Shipping throughput was increased to 650,000 cases monthly
With the system updates, popular products such as canned beer are retrieved from the unit load AS/RS and sent to the depalletizer by way of STV. Products are then picked from the pallet by layer and automatically placed on the conveyor destined for the JSUS. This new system reduced processing time for 200 pallets to less than half of the time required by the original system.
By adding chutes to the JSUS, sorting operations now allocate batches by store on one chute to improve throughput rather than directing items for multiple stores to the same chute. This change drastically reduced loading errors.
For piece picking, the new DPS increased the speed of operation while also decreasing picking errors. Collection cases for the DPS have divider plates to store each bottle so that products can be safely delivered.
The facility’s information system was also improved in the facility renovation. Order requests from the host in the main office now take 15 minutes rather than two hours. The shipping throughput was 70,000 cases when the center opened, but with the new system in place, the center processes 650,000 cases monthly. Sorting and loading errors from the distribution center were eliminated, which significantly increased satisfaction of the company’s retailers.
“Daily improvements in distribution are important,” explains Distribution Center Manager Takahiro Yamauchi. “The most important goal for an in-house distribution center is to increase customer service by reducing workloads at the retail level. The renovation of our automated systems played a significant role in strengthening our infrastructure. In order to support the retailers, we deliver products by store aisle and strive to provide them with excellent service.”
