The Challenge
Established in 1889, Carhartt is a global premium workwear brand with a rich heritage of developing rugged products for workers on and off the job. To accelerate their growth, Carhartt needed a way they could quickly scale and close their capacity gap to improve distribution and speed. DHL Supply Chain, a world-leader in third-party fulfillment and logistics, was an ideal choice.
The Solution
After reviewing options, DHL recommended the Locus Robotics solution to help optimize order profiles and lessen the amount of walking associates had to do. DHL and Carhartt chose Locus robots to close the gap of some of the physicality and the space challenges of big volume warehousing. With the Locus Robotics deployment, they saw immediate impact to productivity and throughput on day one as well as a big boost in employee morale.
We’ve seen UPH productivity double, which is huge to anybody operating warehouses on a costs and efficiency play.
The Results
The Locus Robotics solution has helped the human associates with lessened exertion, flexibility, and more. The Locus robots have enabled the Carhartt and DHL associates to be cross-trained in other different environments, and they have seen promotions as a result. The Locus Robotics solution dashboard also benefits the full team. With the dashboard, they can see when products are starting to ramp up and go out by tracking where the robots are going on a day-to-day basis, so they make adjustments based on that data to place more product into areas and reduce traffic. Peak season was incredibly successful for DHL and Carhartt, as they had a record day of over 110,000 units picked that were supported by Locus Robotics in the each pick process.
We’ve had some past experience with AGVs, and the size, cost model, maintenance, and upkeep with Locus Robotics has been a lot better. The flexibility of adding and reducing as needed has been much better, and then the usability of the technology with the language has been, honestly, a game changer.