Challenge
Bergen Logistics is a global third-party logistics (3PL) company based out of North Bergen, NJ. They specialize in fashion and consumer products and provide a wide range of services to their growing customer base, including warehousing, and pick & pack services for both wholesale and e-commerce order fulfillment.
Operating in a fast-changing market, they successfully anticipated the growth of e-commerce orders to position themselves as a global key player in the fashion logistics market. Recognizing the importance of being able to adapt to this dynamic market environment, the Bergen Logistics management team decided to upgrade one of their East Coast operations centers and wanted to increase productivity, ensure same-day delivery, and remain competitive in a tight labor market. One of the biggest challenges they are facing is volatile seasonal demand, with peak season requirements changing from year to year, which necessitates – to bring a flexible order fulfillment solution in their warehouses.
Bergen Logistics realized that making the transition from manual to automated order fulfillment would help them remain competitive, and they started the search for the latest technological solutions to supplement their warehouse management system.
They decided to implement robotics for their warehouses, but they needed to make sure the selected solution could adapt to their specific operating environment, and scale with them as they grew. In addition, they didn’t want to make major infrastructure changes to their current facilities. Most importantly, the solution had to handle their various customer needs, serving both B2B and B2C markets.
Solution
Ultimately, Bergen Logistics selected CAJA Robotics as the technology solution for one of their NJ warehouses. CAJA’s system provides software, robots, and workstations to optimize order fulfillment processes and warehouse operations.
To make sure the system fits their requirements, Bergen Logistics worked closely with CAJA to adapt the technology to their warehouse needs and ensure a smooth implementation that wouldn’t interrupt operations. The CAJA system currently covers 3,000 m2 of the Bergen Logistics warehouse space, with plans to eventually cover 5,000 m2. The initial installation was fast, taking only 2 weeks, and no major infrastructure changes were needed. The project was completed in stages over a period of 1 year, in order to limit operational interruptions and conduct QA testing to ensure a smooth operation.
The CAJA robotic fulfillment system includes two types of robots: lift robots, which optimize inventory and place bins on lower shelves from which cart robots retrieve them and bring them to the serial picking station.
The robots are operated by CAJA’s proprietary software, which uses artificial intelligence and free path algorithms for advanced inventory optimization and fleet management. 4D navigation is used to ensure that the robots operate on the shortest optimal paths.
The customized picking stations are ergonomically designed to enhance employee productivity and comfort, ensuring a holistic system that seamlessly integrates robotics and people working together in the warehouse – each completing tasks that are suited and
optimized for them.
Results
With the implementation of CAJA’s solution, Bergen Logistics’ order line throughput increased by 40%. This was accomplished by optimizing order processing and warehousing, as well as reducing downtime and time spent by workers walking around the warehouse. As a result, CAJA’s goods-to-person solution allows to process incoming orders faster, deliver items more quickly to customers and frees up a crucial resource, namely the time of the warehouse employees. With the help of CAJA’s technology, Bergen Logistics further improved picking accuracy, reduced inventory discrepancies and customer returns. Crucially, the system led to an increase of storage capacity by 50%, saving warehouse space.
Bergen Logistics finds the Caja system to be highly adaptable, taking advantage of the warehouse ceiling height to increase usable space from 1.7 meters to 3.2 meters, and being able to handle different box sizes. In addition, Bergen Logistics was able to easily integrate CAJA software into their existing warehouse management system.
CAJA’s system is highly scalable, and Bergen Logistics can increase or decrease the automated order fulfillment as needed – a feature that’s especially helpful when Black Friday comes around. In addition, the responsive capability means that Bergen Logistics can switch easily between manual and automated order fulfillment, allowing them to determine the appropriate mode at the right time.
According to Ron Roman, Co-founder & CEO of Bergen Logistics, “CAJA provided us with an optimal automated solution that enables us to provide enhanced services to our customers.” He added, “they adapted the solution to meet our infrastructure and business needs, helping us to save dramatically on labor costs and make our operations more productive and effective.”
Bergen Logistics is looking forward to expanding the coverage of their CAJA system so they can continue to meet their customer’s rapidly changing needs – in particular in today’s warehousing and order fulfillment.
About Caja Robotics
Israeli based Caja Robotics is a global supplier of warehouse automation solutions. The automated storage and retrieval system (ASRS) delivered by Caja Robotics leverages autonomous mobile robots (AMR) to handle all of the inventory storage bins within the warehouse.
The Caja warehouse management system software leverages artificial intelligence to optimize the location of inventory within the warehouse, based on estimations of upcoming orders. Within the warehouse, Caja optimizes the robot paths.
