Polaris Sees 150% Faster Pick Rate with AutoStore

Polaris manufactures off-road vehicles (ATVs and UTVs), snowmobiles, and boats. The company’s distribution center in Wilmington, Ohio serves customers in the US and Canada. For their customers, getting the right parts quickly is essential. However, the company’s large and growing inventory of parts was becoming difficult to manage in its existing warehouse space, and workers were experiencing fatigue from excessive walking distances.

Polaris needed a new system that could store more items, help employees fulfill orders more efficiently and  accurately, and be ready to handle even more growth in the future. The company decided to install an AutoStore system, empowered by Bastian Solutions, in an expansion of their distribution center in Wilmington, Ohio, to address these challenges.

{{quote}}

The Challenge: Limited Storage Space, Worker Fatigue, and a Growing Inventory

Prior to this project, the facility already featured conveyors and some degree of automation. However, to advance Polaris’ operations, the outdated zone-route pick modules needed to evolve into a modern goods-to-person picking solution. The manual zone-route system posed several challenges: a complex training environment with a steep learning curve, heavy reliance on RF devices, poor ergonomics, and significant operator walking fatigue, all of these factors influencing order fulfilment speed & customer quality.

Travis Winans, Distribution Center Manager, explained, “Previously, our operators would walk up to 10 miles per day, so this new goods-to-person solution really cut down on the operator fatigue that we were experiencing.” Additionally, the warehouse was simply running out of storage space for its parts.

{{quote2}}

The Solution: An Automated Storage and Retrieval System

Polaris installed an AutoStore storage and retrieval system at its Ohio distribution center, replacing zone-route picking with an efficient goods-to-person system.

The system is designed with a storage-dense Grid that holds stacked Bins. Instead of employees walking to find parts, 74 R5 Robots move across the Grid, retrieving the Bins and bringing them to employees at 14 Workstations (Ports). The system is integrated with Packsize right-sized packaging technology and 914 m (3,000 ft) of Bastian Solutions Conveyor, creating a smooth workflow from the moment an order is placed until it is boxed and shipped.

The outcome is significant efficiency gains in storage density, picking accuracy, and fulfillment speed.

{{quote3}}

Key Benefits: Reduced Fatigue, Increased Speed and Efficiency

The new system provides clear improvements to the day-to-day functioning of the distribution center and its employees, including:

• Massive storage efficiency: Expanded capacity for 25,000+ SKUs within a compact footprint (tripled their SKU base).
• Picking speed: By bringing parts directly to employees, order picking is now 150% faster, and the total time from picking to packing a box has been cut in half.
• Accuracy and reliability: The system is highly reliable and reduces the chances of picking errors.
• Reduced worker fatigue: The work is less physically demanding for employees, as they no longer need to walk long distances.

The AutoStore system addressed Polaris’ challenges and allowed them to meet their goals and improve the well-being of their employees at the distribution center.

Flexible and Scalable

With this new AutoStore system, Polaris’ current needs are met, and they are prepared for future growth. The company can easily add more Robots and Bins as their business continues to expand, as Bastian Solutions Account Executive Jackson Dean explains: “One of the great benefits of AutoStore as a technology is the flexibility and scalability that it has into the future.”

{{quote4}}

Project specifications

• Implementation type: Greenfield
• Robots: 74 R5 Robots
• Workstations (Ports): 9 CarouselPorts, 5 ConveyorPorts
• Bins: 44,000 Bins
• Integrated technology: Bastian Solutions Conveyor system, sortation, and Packsize packaging machines‍
• Integration partner: Bastian Solutions, a Toyota Automated Logistics company