A recent study led to the design and implementation of an "automated carousel order picking system" for Aeroquip, a major national manufacturer of hose fittings. The carousels were fed from manufacturing by an AGV system. This system enabled the client to reduce a three shift operation to two, abandon a fleet of 15 order picking trucks, close thirteen branch offices and reduced space and manpower. This innovative design compresses the order to delivery time by making the product within the distribution process. This facility has become the backbone of the firms business-to-business supply chain solution.

Synthesized data from a business plan led to the design of a new 200,000 square foot facility supporting Fresh Direct, an e-commerce venture designed for the direct delivery of fresh food and groceries daily. This facility is a food processing plant as much as it is a distribution center. The facility choreographs the selection, and consolidation of up to 8,000 customer orders daily for routed delivery in cooled vans.

The design of a 6,400 unit load position AS/RS and 5 vehicle AGV system for Central Paper Company, Newark, New Jersey. The AGV system moves product to and from the AS/RS system and delivers pallet and partial pallet loads to four order processing stations. The system drastically reduced the cost of damaged goods experienced by the previous lift truck and rack system in addition to enabling Central paper to take customer orders until 5:00 p.m. each day and deliver the goods the next day within a six state area. Order accuracy has been maintained at 99.3% or higher.

A totally mechanized and paperless 450,000 square foot facility for the distribution of footwear to Sears' regional centers and retail stores satisfied the requirements for Automated Distribution Systems (ADS), a 3PL. This facility replenishes 800 stores daily with JIT deliveries. This effort is accomplished in a carousel environment utilizing both pick and put techniques and achieves very high productivity per man hour. Inventory and order accuracy ratings have been 99.9%. The installation will pick, pack, manifest and sort over 165,000 pairs of shoes daily on a single eight hour shift, and requires 45 less people, 25,000 square feet less in space and a smaller capital investment than a conventional tilt-tray sorter solution.

The design of a barcode based warehouse control system for Electrolux, a major manufacturer of premium price vacuum cleaners. The system included robotic palletizers, paperless picking, and a carousel system for service parts to customers and carton sortation.

Multiple 250,000 square foot regional facilities designed for the same day distribution of over 400,000 SKUs of industrial supplies and hardware by MSC Industrial Direct. Each facility contains multiple storage and picking venues including tri-level mezzanines, high bay shelving, VNA pallet storage, multi-station order consolidation, packing and manifesting and parcel sortation. Picking zones and slots are highly profiled for maximum productivity.

Jacmel, a jewelry manufacturer, required a high-speed sortation system to distribute products for store orders for the major retail chains. A custom designed small parts sortation device was installed to sort 11,000 units per hour into 200 store slots, allowing the client to satisfy major store distributions of EDI orders within a seven-day window that includes manufacturing, picking, packing and shipping.

Sigman / Kaiden was subcontracted to assist in conducting an economic examination of "lease-buy" options and fleet size optimization for a global fleet of materials handling equipment at the DDC. The study examined methods of determining utilization, projecting fleet size, and suggested reorganization of the management and measuring devices. An overall opportunity for a 30% fleet reduction was uncovered.