Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/44136
COVER STORY OPERATIONS & INNOVATION Innovating Inventory Management "I am proud of the back of the house—our Operations division, IT support staff and warehouse engineers are the best in the business." —Steve Harden by Rachel Burkons / photos by Rob Brown Walking into the sprawling Santa Fe Springs distribution center that acts as a temporary home for all of SWS' Southern California inventory, one can- not help but fully appreciate the sheer size and scope of Southern's market share. Stocked with row upon row of iconic wine and spirit brands shelved in a patchwork of brightly-colored cases, the warehouse covers an expansive 19 acres. With pallets stacked 37-feet high in the high-density storage portion of the facility, a staggering total of 17 mil- lion cases will go through these doors this year alone. This may be the back-of-house, but as always, Southern manages to innovate. "We are the first U.S. private Robert Pavone stands in the Southern California warehouse. The yellow crane behind him is part of the innovative ASRS system, which allows inventory to be stacked more than twice as high as traditional storage methods and transports and tracks product through the warehouse automatically. sector company in the wine and spirits business to use the Automatic Storage and Retrieval System (ASRS) system," explains Robert Pavone, VP/Operations for SoCal, referring to the year-old ASRS that utilizes state-of-the-art technology to help Southern maximize efficiencies in their business. "The ASRS and the WMI [a newly- added scanning and tracking software system] allow us to utilize the cube and resources of the building much more efficiently," explains Pavone. Once the WMI system scans a pallet, informa- tion is automatically sent to the ASRS system, which is made up of a series of pallet conveyors, "T-cars" and cranes. T-cars shuttle pallets from one end of the warehouse to the other, stopping automatically in front of specific, long, narrow aisles. Essentially the world's greatest Tetris players, the ASRS cranes (there are 17 in this warehouse) then pick up a pallet with ease, precisely placing it exactly where instructed. The power of this incredible technol- october 201 1 / the tasting panel / 53 PHOTO: ROB BROWN