To reduce travel waste and increase efficiency, Dorman Products automated material movement in its 750,000-square-foot facility by deploying robotics automation solutions from Zebra using both the Freight1500 and CartConnect100 autonomous mobile robots.
Challenge
To get auto parts to their customers faster, Dorman Products evaluated travel waste from the thousands of miles traveled inside its warehouses by contributors, either on foot or using material handling equipment (MHE) such as forklifts and pallet trucks.
“The number one waste that my team always identifies is travel,” says Ryan Ogden, Operational Excellence Manager at Dorman Products. “If you add up the amount of travel that they do any given month, it’s over 15,000 miles.”
To meet this challenge, they deployed Zebra’s PalletTransport1500 autonomous mobile robot for shipping lane delivery and the CartConnect100 for outbound production / picking. The expected benefits from deploying this new system were reducing travel waste and enable contributors to dedicate more time to valued tasks such as stock picking.
Results
• Realized a 16% reduction in the distance contributors travel within the warehouse
• Saw a 16% improvement in the pick rate and revenue per labor hour
• Achieved greater accuracy for warehouse deliveries
• Reduced waiting time for product deliveries
• Staff has flexibility manage their mobile robots with drag-and-drop software to easily create and customize workflows in-house and in real time.
