An online glasses company had been growing in demand and popularity nationwide and they needed to scale up fulfillment operations. The Company’s hiring team was facing rising costs of recruitment, training, and retention of good labor so Management decided to explore automation in the facility.
At a tradeshow later that year, the Company’s management visited PSI’s booth and explained their current processes and how their operators were manually packing and preparing each order for shipment. They knew that there was an opportunity for improvement and set up a time with PSI’s team to conduct a time study at their fulfillment center.
The time study found that the biggest bottlenecks were at the end of the line: operators could not pack the orders fast enough.
THE SOLUTION:
PSI recommended and installed a Print Feeder – Single Fold immediately after the product was placed in the open box to handle the printing and insertion of individual invoices. PSI’s Print Feeder sped up the process of printing and inserting invoices while eliminating errors that occurred at this step. Upon approach to the print feeder, the container’s unique LPN is scanned and signals to the Print Feeder which invoice to print, fold, and insert – all within seconds.
This simple addition to the pack station easily kept up with the Company’s current throughput but also allowed them to scale up on the existing line due to the time savings from adding automated print on demand.