Distribution Application Solutions | Custom Material Handling Solutions

Material Handling Solutions for Every Distribution Application

Whether an operation is considering the construction of a new distribution or fulfillment center, or a retrofit or expansion of an existing facility, it’s important to create a material handling solution that fits the overarching supply chain strategy. DCS has four decades of experience designing and integrating comprehensive, end-to-end material handling solutions that meet a multitude of operational goals. Whether conventional, semi-automated, or fully automated, DCS can help your organization implement a custom material handling solution that meets its goals while maximizing return on investment (ROI).

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Distribution Applications

DCS has over 40 years of experience designing and integrating end-to-end material handling solutions for diverse distribution applications.

Last Mile / Middle Mile Delivery

As delivery speed and accuracy increase in importance, material handling efficiencies are crucial in the last mile and middle mile of distribution operations.

Bulk Sortation of Outbound Packages

DCS’s turnkey semi-automated bulk sort solution helps parcel sortation operations sort and route packages more efficiently regardless of amount of available labor.

Goods-to-Person Order Fulfillment

While technologies differ in methodology and capital expenditure requirements, they all present products for an order to an associate located at a workstation.

Dark Distribution Centers

DCS has designed and installed solutions to outfit Dark DCs, which allow retailers to provide same day delivery to a customer’s home or a retail store for pick-up.

Micro-Fulfillment Centers

Micro-fulfillment centers (MFCs) are frequently located close to metro areas as a means to get orders delivered to customers in less time.

Reverse Logistics

For operations that opt to handle returns in-house, DCS can help design and engineer the optimal solution.

Last Mile / Middle Mile Delivery

Getting orders to e-commerce customers as quickly as possible is an ongoing challenge for online and multi-channel retailers. That’s why more are turning to a variety of different strategies to improve material handling efficiencies and throughput in their last mile and middle mile distribution operations.

DCS has designed and implemented several material handling and warehouse automation solutions to help retailers achieve their fulfillment goals. These include creating parcel cross-docking facilities with conveyors and sortation, equipping third-party logistics (3PL) solutions providers with fulfillment automation, and outfitting retailers’ designated middle-mile sortation facilities to cut delivery time.

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Parcels are Moving on Belt Conveyor at Post Sorting Office.

Bulk Sortation of Outbound Packages

Helping parcel sortation operations more effectively sort and route packages regardless of the amount of labor available is DCS’s turnkey semi-automated bulk sort solution. It incorporates a bulk sorter and series of pushers that impel batches of mixed outbound parcels onto a chute. Each chute feeds a manual sortation workstation where an associate sorts the items by destination and size.

Parcels are then routed to different zones, including carrier gaylords, accumulation for buffering outbound cartons, and carton singulation for manual routing. Modularly configurable, areas within the solution can be turned off and on to accommodate shifting order volumes when enabling fewer workers to manage variable throughput more efficiently.

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Goods-to-Person Order Fulfillment

There are a number of different goods-to-person automated fulfillment solutions available to help distribution operations more quickly and accurately pick items for orders. They range from autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) to automated storage and retrieval solutions (ASRS). While the technologies differ in methodology and capital expenditure requirements, they all present products for an order to an associate located at a workstation. By eliminating travel and search time completely, these strategic solutions improve both efficiency and accuracy. DCS has designed and implemented a broad variety of these technologies to support various goods-to-person picking and order fulfillment strategies.

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Dark Distribution Centers

With the increase in demand for direct-to-consumer shipments and buy-online-pick-up-in-store (BOPIS) offerings among grocery and general merchandise retailers, operations have struggled to keep up. Challenges include how to adequately staff their facilities and to ship those orders affordably and fast enough to meet shoppers’ expectations. As a result, more operations have been investing in “Dark” distribution centers, or “Dark DCs”, equipped with automated material handling solutions, including crane or shuttle based automated storage and retrieval systems (ASRS), autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) and automated guided vehicles (AGVs).

With these automated fulfillment technologies, very few staffers are needed to fill and pack orders (truly Dark DCs deploy fleets of robotic picking arms instead of human pickers). Highly dense and often deployed in non-traditional facilities- such as abandoned mall anchor stores and downtown urban buildings- Dark DCs allow retailers to provide same day delivery to a customer’s home or a retail store for pick-up. DCS has designed and installed solutions to outfit Dark DCs throughout the U.S.

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An army of robots efficiently sorting hundreds of parcels per hour(Automated guided vehicle) AGV.

Micro-Fulfillment Centers

Micro-fulfillment centers (MFCs) are frequently located close to metro areas as a means to get orders delivered to customers in less time. Embraced by grocery retailers in particular, MFCs support both delivery and curbside pickup services. Typically ranging in size from 5,000 to 25,000 square feet, MFCs often incorporate highly automated material handling systems with shuttles or automated storage and retrieval systems (ASRS).

Requiring lower capital investment and less time to build and install than traditional warehouses, MFCs offer significant cost savings by reducing labor through automation, locations that minimize last mile delivery distances, and reduced real estate costs. They can be free-standing facilities or installed in the backroom or basement of a retail store. Some are even deployed in high-rises in densely populated urban cores. DCS offers a variety of customized material handling solutions for MFCs based on the order and inventory profiles of a given operation.

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Handsome Male Worker Wearing Hard Hat Holding Digital Tablet Computer Walking Through Retail Warehouse full of Shelves with Goods. Working in Logistics and Distribution Center.

Reverse Logistics

With the dramatic uptick in e-commerce retailing, a corresponding increase in returns has occurred. How a retailer integrates reverse logistics processes into its existing operations can mean the difference between successfully returning items into profitable, active inventory and generating costly waste. DCS can help a company decide if it’s best to outsource returns to a third-party logistics (3PL) service provider, handle them internally, or route them to a dedicated facility.

Further, for operations that opt to handle returns in-house, DCS can help design and engineer the optimal solution. These include creating and equipping an area solely for manual returns processing; utilizing existing automated material handling equipment (such as conveyor and sortation systems) for returns handling on a second or third shift; or investing in a fully automated shuttle or cube storage system to help sort and store manually dispositioned returns in a highly dense footprint.

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Strategic Solutions

Companies in a broad range of industries turn to DCS to address multiple objectives, including:

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Reducing labor costs
Increasing accuracy
Improving efficiency
Increasing throughput
Expanding capacity
Supporting growth
Meeting Customer Expectations