The Challenge
Kimball Midwest is a leading MRO distributor serving customers across North America. The company experienced double-digit business growth while facing labor shortages, turnover, and increasing training demands. As Kimball Midwest continued its long-standing growth trajectory and worked toward its next phase of expansion, it sought a way to maintain 99.9% same-day shipping SLA while reducing dependence on temporary labor and creating a more scalable fulfillment operation. Maintaining 99.9% same-day shipping while scaling toward $1 billion in revenue required a solution that could improve productivity, reduce physical strain on associates, and support long-term workforce stability without disrupting existing operations.
The Solution
Kimball Midwest deployed Locus Robotics autonomous mobile robots across both picking and putaway workflows while keeping existing warehouse layouts, shelving, and pallet rack systems in place.
The Results
By interleaving picking and putaway work within a single solution, associates gained greater flexibility throughout the day, allowing operations to adapt more effectively to changing workload demands while improving productivity across both processes.
Our overtime now is gone, our temps are gone, and we’re able to keep up with our day-to-day processes.