From Bottleneck to Breakthrough: How Smart Automation Transformed Meyer Cookware’s E-commerce

The Client: Meyer Corporation

Imagine your kitchen cabinets – there’s a good chance a piece of Meyer cookware is in there. As the largest cookware company in the U.S., Meyer Corporation is behind beloved brands like Anolon, Circulon, Farberware, and Rachael Ray. Their massive 530,000-square-foot Distribution Center (DC) in Fairfield, California, is the engine that gets these popular products to retailers and directly to consumers.

The Challenge

The explosion of online shopping brought both incredible opportunity and significant challenges for Meyer. Consumers weren’t just buying cookware; they expected it delivered to their doorstep, often the very next day. This shift from shipping full cases to retail stores to sending individual items directly to homes created a whole new set of complexities within their DC.

The Shifting Landscape of Fulfillment

• From Cases to Eaches: Instead of picking and shipping full cases, Meyer increasingly had to break down cases and handle individual units. This meant more boxes, more packing materials (dunnage), and significantly more labor per order.
• Rising Costs: The increased handling of individual items directly translated to higher operational costs for labor and materials.
• Capacity Constraints: By 2013, the volume of e-commerce orders during peak season overwhelmed their existing system, causing them to fall behind on critical service commitments to major retailers like Walmart, Target, and Kohl’s.
• The Need for Speed: Meeting the growing demand for same-day turnaround on orders placed before noon Pacific became a critical goal that their current setup couldn’t consistently achieve.
• Replenishment Bottlenecks: While picking individual items was manageable, the real challenge was keeping the pick line stocked with products fast enough. The replenishment process was slow and inefficient, creating a bottleneck that slowed the entire operation.

“Whereas before, a full case might be picked and shipped to a retail store, now, quite often, a case will be broken down into individual units. This increases costs from the box used to pack the item, dunnage materials plus handling labor,” said Senior Director of Distribution & Logistics, Mark Warcholski.

Meyer needed a solution that could not only handle the increased volume and complexity of e-commerce orders but also do so profitably, meet service level agreements, and set them up for future growth.

The Solution

Recognizing the need for a fundamental change, Meyer turned to FloStor Engineering. This is where the role of a materials handling system integrator becomes crucial. Think of an integrator not just as a vendor selling equipment, but as the architect and general contractor for your warehouse’s internal workings. They look at the entire operation – from receiving to shipping – and design a cohesive system, often bringing together different types and brands of equipment, software, and processes to work seamlessly as one.

FloStor didn’t just propose new equipment; they partnered with Meyer to understand their unique challenges and goals, focusing on enhancing their existing infrastructure where possible to maximize their previous investments.

“We had recently done another project with FloStor about three-and-a-half years prior where we were able to take a pre-existing blueprint and expand off of that, utilizing what was already there so we could still get a return on that original investment. We knew we wanted to try and do that when updating this e-commerce system.” -Mark Warcholski

A Tailored, Integrated Approach

FloStor designed and implemented a series of strategic enhancements to Meyer’s e-commerce pick-pack-ship process:

• Revamped Pick Line and Replenishment: At the heart of the solution was addressing the replenishment bottleneck. FloStor redesigned the pick line and the process for restocking it, ensuring product flowed continuously.
• Automated Routing: Using barcode readers and a unique labeling system, boxes were automatically routed down the main conveyor line to one of eight picking zones or diverted to other areas.
• Single-Line Order Pack-Out Module: A dedicated pick-and-pack module was created specifically for single-item orders. This moved high-volume, simple orders off the main pick line, significantly increasing efficiency.

“The employee is working efficiently in a smaller goods-to-person area. The boxes come to them via a conveyor system. The master case, days ago, would have been picked to a pallet and replenished to the back of the main line manually. All those extra steps have been cut out.” [Mark Warcholski]

• Overhead Detrash Line: To improve efficiency and support sustainability goals, an overhead conveyor system was installed to quickly remove empty boxes from the picking area. Pickers could simply toss empty boxes onto the line, eliminating the need for manual breakdown and separate trips to recycling bins.
• Slow-Pick Module: Items with lower picking frequency (the “slow movers” based on the 80/20 rule) were relocated to a separate “slow-pick module.” This freed up valuable space and increased efficiency on the main, fast-moving pick line.
• Enhanced Accuracy Checks: Barcode readers were strategically placed throughout the system, including at the end of shipping lanes, to provide final accuracy checks before parcels left the DC. This ensures the right products are in the right boxes and going to the correct shipping mode. Parcels that fail the check are diverted to a quarantine lane for investigation.
• Ergonomic Enhancements: FloStor incorporated ergonomic improvements along the pick line, such as adjustable lift tables, to reduce employee strain and increase productivity.
• Seamless Controls Integration: FloStor’s controls team integrated multiple systems – barcode readers, sortation systems, remote control panels – with Meyer’s existing Warehouse Management System (WMS), ensuring all components worked together harmoniously.

The Results: Efficiency, Accuracy, and Profitability

By implementing these integrated solutions, Meyer Corporation achieved significant improvements:

• Faster Product Movement: Product movement through the system increased by 25% to 30%.
• Reduced Replenishment Time: Replenishment time was reduced by 20% during normal season and a remarkable 40% during peak season, directly addressing the previous bottleneck.
• Improved Accuracy: Enhanced checks throughout the process led to greater accuracy in goods shipped.
• Reduced Labor Costs & Improved Work-Life Balance: The increased efficiency allowed Meyer to reduce picking operations from three shifts to two shifts during the peak holiday season. This also meant significantly less weekend work, moving from working 24/7 during the previous peak to reducing Saturdays and Sundays.

“So this is a huge gain,” says Warcholski. “Shift work got reduced, we even reduced some Saturdays and Sundays in the 2014 peak season, whereas the year prior, we were working 24/7 from Thanksgiving all the way past Christmas to the end of the year. The new system was more efficient, allowing us to process more through it in a shorter amount of time.”

• Zero Downtime During Installation: FloStor’s flexible and collaborative approach ensured the new system was brought online without interrupting Meyer’s live production and fulfillment operations, incurring zero downtime.

Mark Warcholski: “That’s the value of having a flexible partner who understands that business must go on and, at times, plans need to be adjusted and reworked if, for instance, there was a delay in equipment arriving or something like that. With FloStor, we were able to work through all those kinds of issues and keep running.”

• Enhanced Sustainability: The overhead detrash line and focus on minimizing packaging aligned with Meyer’s commitment to sustainable practices.

FloStor’s role as a materials handling system integrator was key to Meyer’s success. They didn’t just sell equipment; they provided a comprehensive, tailored solution that integrated various technologies and processes to solve Meyer’s specific e-commerce fulfillment challenges, demonstrating how strategic automation can turn operational bottlenecks into a competitive advantage.