Polaris Sees 150% Faster Pick Rate with AutoStore

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Polaris manufactures ATVs, snowmobiles, boats, and motorcycles. The Ohio warehouse is serving clients 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 faster and more accurately, and be ready to handle even more growth in the future. The company decided to install an AutoStore system, empowered by Bastian Solutions, at a new distribution center in Wilmington, Ohio, to address these challenges.

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

Polaris’s manual operations required employees to walk through the warehouse to find parts for each order, an approach with several problems: Training new employees was time-consuming because they had to memorize where thousands of parts were located, and the constant walking was tiring, leading to slower order processing as the day progressed. Travis Winans, the distribution center manager, explained, “Previously, our operators would walk up to 10 miles per day, so this really cut down on the operator fatigue that we were experiencing.” Importantly, the warehouse was simply running out of storage space for its parts.

These delays and operational inefficiencies impacted how quickly Polaris could serve its customers.

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The Solution: An Automated Storage and Retrieval System

Polaris installed an AutoStore storage and retrieval system at its new 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 sorting and packing technology and an existing 914 m (3,000 ft) Bastian 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.

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Key Benefits: Reduced Fatigue, Increased Speed and Efficiency

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

• 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 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.”

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Project specifications

• Implementation type: Greenfield
• Robots: 74 R5 Robots
• Workstations (Ports): 9 CarouselPorts, 5 ConveyorPorts
• Bins: 44,000 Bins
• Integrated technology: Conveyor system, sortation, and Packsize packaging machines

Integration partner: Bastian Solutions