Accelerate Order Processing with End-to-End Automation at Lane Automotive

The system serves as the orchestration engine for a comprehensive end-to-end automated order fulfillment solution. (Image: Exotec)

For over 60 years, Lane Automotive, Inc. has served the racing community as a premier global distributor of aftermarket performance automotive parts and accessories. Operating from its primary 416,000 square-foot facility located in Watervliet, MI, Lane Automotive stocks over 100,000 SKUs and offers more than 3.5 million parts from its expansive catalog. They also welcome customers to shop its vast product selection at their 10,000-square-foot onsite retail showroom.

In a high-performance market where agility, accuracy, and consistency are crucial to its customers’ success, Lane Automotive places the utmost importance on a customer-first approach. This commitment led the company to explore end-to-end solutions for their order fulfillment operations. They aimed to transform existing operations at their brownfield site, prioritizing improvements in operational performance, efficiency, accuracy, and employee experience while maintaining the flexibility to adapt and expand over time.

Considering that many of its customers order critical parts ahead of the weekend or before special events, timely and accurate fulfillment is essential to delivering the best customer experience possible. It’s imperative that the company meet fulfillment deadlines and carrier pickup times to deliver on its customer expectations, especially since it receives over 50 percent of its daily order volume between 3 PM–7 PM and its first carrier pickup time is 7:30 PM.

As volumes have grown, these challenges have also placed a strain on Lane Automotive’s fulfillment associates who found themselves covering distances of 12+ miles per day to meet the demand. In response, the company proactively sought a solution to enhance employee productivity, ergonomics, and improve the overall working experience.

Picking station output jumped from 50 to over 300 lines per hour. (Image: Exotec)

Additionally, as a rapidly expanding entity, Lane Automotive demanded an agile and scalable system capable of seamlessly managing multi-channel fulfillment for a diverse array of products with varying demand. Successfully implementing a solution was essential to maintaining the company’s growth momentum and addressing the changing needs of its diverse customer base.

The Skypod System at Lane Automotive’s central distribution center was integrated by Conveyco. The system serves as the orchestration engine for a comprehensive end-to-end automated order fulfillment solution. This includes multiple inbound stations with each containing 24 buffer put-to-light cells, empty carton delivery system that directs formed shipping cartons to their respective picking stations, multiple inline weight scales for additional layers of order accuracy and validation, and inline packing list insertion, automated packing systems, inline label applicators, and more.

The company experienced significant improvement in performance. The throughput increased by over 600 percent with end-to-end automation. Picking station output jumped from 50 to over 300 lines per hour. Order processing time dropped from an average of 109 minutes to just 15, dramatically shortening the fulfillment cycle from picking to trailer. The new system also easily scales for growth and peak seasons — with robots added in minutes, picking stations in days, and racks in weeks — all with minimal disruption to operations.

“Our customers shape every decision we make as a company, so we had to identify the right end-to-end solution (with goods-to-person robotics at its core) that could easily integrate with our existing automation and distribution ecosystem to transform our fulfillment operations for years to come. Exotec and Conveyco were key partners in our distribution automation journey and delivered best-in-class automation technologies to fully maximize the efficiency and throughput of the Skypod system,” said David Meadow, Chief Information Officer, Lane Automotive.

Lane Automotive slashed order processing time from 109 to under 15 minutes with the Exotec Skypod System — the core technology enabling agile, high-speed fulfillment across all channels.

This article was contributed by Exotec (Lille, France). For more information, visit here  .