Analysis of the storage and picking systems adoption in the apparel industry

The current work will comprise a study on the operations of picking and storage handled by the apparel companies in order to find the variable motivating the selection of a specific solution. The analysis was done through a case study approach. 40 companies within the apparel industry were evaluated and clustered according to the storage and picking systems implemented and the automation levels of those systems. Qualitative variables such as the prevalent apparel category the company specializes in (outwear, sportswear, footwear, innerwear, accessories), the type of retail channel used (online, traditional or multichannel) and the type of company (manufacturers, distributors, both) were examined together with quantitative variables such as number of SKUs, throughput capacity, sales volume, among other in order to establish their incidence on the storage and picking systems selection process. The results showed that the qualitative variables, mentioned before, do not have a strong influence on the decision. At the end, every company no matter the type of apparel product offering or the retail channel, are trying to reduce cost while improving the productivity within their warehouses and distribution centers. Besides that, quantitative variables showed to have a big incidence on the level of automation of the storage and picking solution. Companies with higher number of SKUs tend to implemented higher storage automation level, while the throughput showed a similar relations with the picking level of automation, since the higher the throughput the higher the level of automation for the picking systems. Indeed, moving toward an automated solution implies a high capital cost, and the result allowed concluding that more profitable SKUs may facilitate or support moving to an automated solution. It worth mentioning that this study proved that the prime factor that brought about the need for automation was the accommodation of growth. It is also important to comment that apparel industry was selected as a subject of this study due complexity of its supply chain operations, originated by the short product life cycles, the tremendous product variety, the volatile and the unpredictable demand, and the long and inflexible supply processes. Also the industry has also been in a transition over the last 20 years: significant consolidation in retail, majority of apparel manufacturing operations moving overseas and, more recently, the aim of becoming onmi-channel in order to provide its exigent customer a seamless shopping experience. Since, the information to conduct this analysis was obtain from secondary sources (consultant societies websites) there may be some bias and therefore, an interesting exercise may be to enrich this study by collecting information directly the companies.