Wholesaler-distributor Orgill is making good on its long-held promise to fill orders faster and more accurately thanks to voice-powered warehouse optimization software from Lucas Systems.
Independent hardware distributor Orgill has kept pace with growing demand for its products and services by investing in technology that helps get orders out the door fast and accurately. Founded in 1847, the Tennessee-based company serves more than 12,000 retail hardware stores, home centers, lumber dealers, and farm stores throughout the United States and Canada, and in more than 50 countries around the world. Fulfillment excellence has been a core competency from the start and remains a guiding light in today’s fast-paced distribution environment, according to company leaders.
“Anything the warehouse associates don’t immediately have, or if they are missing an item or product, we will find that product and make sure our customers have everything they ordered,” Maria Crumb, a supervisor at Orgill’s Rome, New York, distribution center said in a recent company statement. “Our mission is to help our customers be successful. The way we do that is by making sure that we send the correct product to our customers each and every time.”
Warehouse optimization software developer Lucas Systems has been a key part of that effort, helping Orgill move from paper-based picking operations to an automated system driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and voice technology in 2012. The switch yielded immediate improvements in productivity and training, and continues to bear fruit today.
OVERCOMING CHALLENGES
Orgill’s sales have doubled over the past 10 years, coinciding with its shift from manual to automated picking using the Lucas Warehouse Optimization Suite and its Jennifer technology—an AI-powered system that optimizes and orchestrates warehouse operations to reduce labor costs, improve accuracy, and increase throughput. Orgill implemented the system as a way to keep up with the fast-paced growth the company had been experiencing, using Jennifer’s voice-directed picking capabilities to speed operations. Today, the distributor uses Jennifer across its network of eight distribution centers, each of which houses more than 75,000 stock-keeping units (SKUs) and that together total more than 5 million square feet of space.
The system has grown alongside Orgill’s expanding services, which today include filling standard retail store orders, managing inventory for smaller customers, and even functioning as the e-commerce arm for many customers. In all instances, Orgill uses the Jennifer voice picking technology to streamline the fulfillment process—the hands-free system tells warehouse associates exactly where they need to be, what they need to pick, and where it needs to go so that customers receive accurate, easy-to-unload orders.
REAPING REWARDS
Today, Orgill’s warehouse associates are picking faster and more accurately than ever before, and the numbers speak for themselves. Since implementing the system:
Picking has gone from 90 lines per hour to 140 lines per hour—a 55% increase, or from one pick every 40 seconds to one pick every 22 seconds;
Training time has dropped from 40 hours to one hour;
Accuracy has increased slightly alongside picking speed, improving by 1% to 2%—a big win for Orgill, which had high accuracy rates to begin with. Notably, the company has managed to avoid sacrificing accuracy for speed—a trade-off that experts say all too often accompanies such projects.
“Our quality requirement is 0.4, so 99.6% of the time, the pick has to be with the correct quantity and the correct item,” Josh Sencindiver, order filling manager at the Rome distribution center, said in the statement describing the Lucas project.
Orgill has enhanced and tailored the Jennifer system—both its software and hardware—since the 2012 implementation and has undergone several major upgrades to the Lucas platform as new generations have become available.
It’s all part of keeping up with the times and growing the business.
“What we did 20 years ago couldn’t keep up with the growth that we have today,” Mark Scanlon, Orgill’s vice president of Northeast distribution, said in the company statement. “Jennifer and the Lucas platform are an integral part of our strategy as we move forward.”
Supply chain planning (SCP) leaders working on transformation efforts are focused on two major high-impact technology trends, including composite AI and supply chain data governance, according to a study from Gartner, Inc.
"SCP leaders are in the process of developing transformation roadmaps that will prioritize delivering on advanced decision intelligence and automated decision making," Eva Dawkins, Director Analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain practice, said in a release. "Composite AI, which is the combined application of different AI techniques to improve learning efficiency, will drive the optimization and automation of many planning activities at scale, while supply chain data governance is the foundational key for digital transformation.”
Their pursuit of those roadmaps is often complicated by frequent disruptions and the rapid pace of technological innovation. But Gartner says those leaders can accelerate the realized value of technology investments by facilitating a shift from IT-led to business-led digital leadership, with SCP leaders taking ownership of multidisciplinary teams to advance business operations, channels and products.
“A sound data governance strategy supports advanced technologies, such as composite AI, while also facilitating collaboration throughout the supply chain technology ecosystem,” said Dawkins. “Without attention to data governance, SCP leaders will likely struggle to achieve their expected ROI on key technology investments.”
The British logistics robot vendor Dexory this week said it has raised $80 million in venture funding to support an expansion of its artificial intelligence (AI) powered features, grow its global team, and accelerate the deployment of its autonomous robots.
A “significant focus” continues to be on expanding across the U.S. market, where Dexory is live with customers in seven states and last month opened a U.S. headquarters in Nashville. The Series B will also enhance development and production facilities at its UK headquarters, the firm said.
The “series B” funding round was led by DTCP, with participation from Latitude Ventures, Wave-X and Bootstrap Europe, along with existing investors Atomico, Lakestar, Capnamic, and several angels from the logistics industry. With the close of the round, Dexory has now raised $120 million over the past three years.
Dexory says its product, DexoryView, provides real-time visibility across warehouses of any size through its autonomous mobile robots and AI. The rolling bots use sensor and image data and continuous data collection to perform rapid warehouse scans and create digital twins of warehouse spaces, allowing for optimized performance and future scenario simulations.
Originally announced in September, the move will allow Deutsche Bahn to “fully focus on restructuring the rail infrastructure in Germany and providing climate-friendly passenger and freight transport operations in Germany and Europe,” Werner Gatzer, Chairman of the DB Supervisory Board, said in a release.
For its purchase price, DSV gains an organization with around 72,700 employees at over 1,850 locations. The new owner says it plans to investment around one billion euros in coming years to promote additional growth in German operations. Together, DSV and Schenker will have a combined workforce of approximately 147,000 employees in more than 90 countries, earning pro forma revenue of approximately $43.3 billion (based on 2023 numbers), DSV said.
After removing that unit, Deutsche Bahn retains its core business called the “Systemverbund Bahn,” which includes passenger transport activities in Germany, rail freight activities, operational service units, and railroad infrastructure companies. The DB Group, headquartered in Berlin, employs around 340,000 people.
“We have set clear goals to structurally modernize Deutsche Bahn in the areas of infrastructure, operations and profitability and focus on the core business. The proceeds from the sale will significantly reduce DB’s debt and thus make an important contribution to the financial stability of the DB Group. At the same time, DB Schenker will gain a strong strategic owner in DSV,” Deutsche Bahn CEO Richard Lutz said in a release.
Transportation industry veteran Anne Reinke will become president & CEO of trade group the Intermodal Association of North America (IANA) at the end of the year, stepping into the position from her previous post leading third party logistics (3PL) trade group the Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA), both organizations said today.
Meanwhile, TIA today announced that insider Christopher Burroughs would fill Reinke’s shoes as president & CEO. Burroughs has been with TIA for 13 years, most recently as its vice president of Government Affairs for the past six years, during which time he oversaw all legislative and regulatory efforts before Congress and the federal agencies.
Before her four years leading TIA, Reinke spent two years as Deputy Assistant Secretary with the U.S. Department of Transportation and 16 years with CSX Corporation.
Serious inland flooding and widespread power outages are likely to sweep across Florida and other Southeast states in coming days with the arrival of Hurricane Helene, which is now predicted to make landfall Thursday evening along Florida’s northwest coast as a major hurricane, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
While the most catastrophic landfall impact is expected in the sparsely-population Big Bend area of Florida, it’s not only sea-front cities that are at risk. Since Helene is an “unusually large storm,” its flooding, rainfall, and high winds won’t be limited only to the Gulf Coast, but are expected to travel hundreds of miles inland, the weather service said. Heavy rainfall is expected to begin in the region even before the storm comes ashore, and the wet conditions will continue to move northward into the southern Appalachians region through Friday, dumping storm total rainfall amounts of up to 18 inches. Specifically, the major flood risk includes the urban areas around Tallahassee, metro Atlanta, and western North Carolina.
In addition to its human toll, the storm could exert serious business impacts, according to the supply chain mapping and monitoring firm Resilinc. Those will be largely triggered by significant flooding, which could halt oil operations, force mandatory evacuations, restrict ports, and disrupt air traffic.
While the storm’s track is currently forecast to miss the critical ports of Miami and New Orleans, it could still hurt operations throughout the Southeast agricultural belt, which produces products like soybeans, cotton, peanuts, corn, and tobacco, according to Everstream Analytics.
That widespread footprint could also hinder supply chain and logistics flows along stretches of interstate highways I-10 and I-75 and on regional rail lines operated by Norfolk Southern and CSX. And Hurricane Helene could also likely impact business operations by unleashing power outages, deep flooding, and wind damage in northern Florida portions of Georgia, Everstream Analytics said.
Before the storm had even touched Florida soil, recovery efforts were already being launched by humanitarian aid group the American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN). In a statement on Wednesday, the group said it is urging residents in the storm's path across the Southeast to heed evacuation notices and safety advisories, and reminding members of the logistics community that their post-storm help could be needed soon. The group will continue to update its Disaster Micro-Site with Hurricane Helene resources and with requests for donated logistics assistance, most of which will start arriving within 24 to 72 hours after the storm’s initial landfall, ALAN said.