Case Study: Winchester Cold Storage – Count Backs
Background:Winchester Cold Storage provides food grade freezer and temperature controlled storage solutions. At one point in history the company was the “Largest Apple Storage in the World!” As such, the company’s facilities provide an unusually large capacity of controlled atmosphere storage where temperature, humidity, oxygen and other room conditions can be monitored and controlled. |
The Challenge:Accuracy and automation in the receiving operations was looking for improvements. Winchester’s accuracy numbers were excellent at 99.8%. However there is always room for improvement. The inaccuracies occurred when shipping 5, 10, 20 cases to customers that usually received full pallets. Winchester often had a smaller order come down the line intended to be case-picked but ended up getting shipped as a full skid instead. Winchester needed the ability to verify the contents remaining in the bin location as a second verification of the pick quantity accuracy. |
Requirements:
- Implement count back checks through the use of MobileLink tablet scanners
- Include a system to check using counts for Bin or Pallet ID
- Picker to be alerted if count back quantity is incorrect
- Exception notifications alert sent via email to supervisor
Results:
Camelot’s implementation and software development teams spent time with Winchester’s operations staff to fully understand the core challenges and designed a solution that would allow Winchester to eliminate mis-shipments. The solution added bin and pallet ID count backs to be done by the picker using a tablet scanner with no additional time needed during the pick process. The email exceptions notification functionality was also added to notify the supervisor when there was a discrepancy. The new features have worked very well for Winchester with no discrepancies reported from the freezer after 1+ months of going live.