CASE STUDY OFFICEMAX
OFFICEMAX POWERS DISTRIBUTION
FACILITIES WITH JENNIFER™
OfficeMax is a leader in both business-to-business office
product solutions and retail office products and one of the
fastest growing companies in the past two decades.
Headquartered in Itasca, Illinois, the company provides
office supplies and paper, technology products and
solutions, and furniture to large, medium and small
businesses and consumers.
With over $8 billion in sales, over 40,000 associates,
almost 1,000 superstores, 25,000 products and a range of
business services, OfficeMax meets the needs of
enterprise-level, mid-size and small businesses, and
individual customers.
Each OfficeMax superstore offers approximately 8,000
stock-keeping units (SKUs) of name brand and OfficeMax
-branded merchandise – a wide range of in-stock items
not traditionally found in office supply stores. The
company also reaches customers in the United States
through its award winning ecommerce site,
OfficeMax.com, its direct-mail catalogs, and its outside
sales force, all of which are serviced by more than 30
delivery centers, two national customer call and contact
centers and three 600,000 square foot PowerMax
distribution facilities.
THE OPPORTUNITY
In 1998, OfficeMax built three 600,000 square foot
PowerMax warehouses, located in Hazelton, PA, McCalla,
AL, and Las Vegas, NV to help improve inventory turnover.
All three warehouses run SAP’s warehouse management
software and handle over 95% of the retail store inventory
replenishment. The facilities in Hazelton and McCalla were
equipped with pick to light systems for broken-case picking.
The Nevada facility had a paper system, as it was serving a
newer market and its processes were still evolving.
When the time arrived to consider more automated
capabilities for the Nevada facility, OfficeMax considered
pick-to-light and also decided to evaluate voice. The
principal goals of the project were to increase the accuracy
and productivity of their piece picking operations.
McCalla, AL PowerMax Facility
CASE STUDY OFFICEMAX
“
―Training and support from Lucas during roll-out was great. Jennifer is easy to use. The
associates picked it up very quickly and enjoy using it…. They would never go back to paper.‖
THE SOLUTION
THE RESULT
Implementation at the Las Vegas facility was done by a
team of Lucas on site engineers to ensure a smooth ramp
up. ―The Las Vegas team was our pilot site, and early
results were great‖ states Alan McDonough, Director of
Logistics Systems at OfficeMax. ―In a very short period of
time, the entire warehouse team was able to successfully
migrate from using paper to using Jennifer.‖
Today Jennifer is fully implemented for broken case and full
-case picking in all three PowerMax facilities. Accuracy has
increased from 99% to more than 99.9%. Productivity also
increased by 10- 12% overall, a significant improvement
given the productivity of the previous pick-to-light systems.
McDonough adds, ―At first the warehouse associates were
apprehensive because talking to Jennifer was different than
other systems they had ever used. But they quickly
adjusted, and now they would never go back to paper.‖
Concludes McDonough, ―Lucas was the best match for us.
They are very strong in software, and Jennifer is easy to
use. Our warehouse team picked it up quickly and now
really enjoy it.‖
As a result of the smooth roll-out and positive accuracy and
productivity gains at Las Vegas, OfficeMax decided to
implement Jennifer at the other two PowerMax facilities in
Alabama and Pennsylvania, both of which had been
considering an upgrade to their existing pick-to-light
systems. Armed with experience from the first Jennifer roll
out, the OfficeMax implementation team was able to handle
90% of the training needed at the other facilities, reducing
cost and reliance on Lucas.
Based on the success of the Jennifer piece-picking solution,
OfficeMax later turned to Lucas to extend the Jennifer™
solution to the case-picking areas using Motorola MC9000
terminals.
ABOUT LUCAS SYSTEMS
Lucas has delivered more voice-directed logistics
solutions for distribution centers on a wider variety of
mobile computers than any other company.
We work with market leaders in many industries—food
and beverage, retail, 3PL, manufacturing, and
healthcare—to provide solutions that increase accuracy,
productivity and employee satisfaction.
Our solutions use best-of-breed voice technology, open
SOA software standards, and open, multi-modal mobile
computers from industry leaders like Motorola,
Honeywell, and Intermec.
Hazelton, PA PowerMax Facility
To learn more, call (724)-940-7000, email
Jennifer@lucasware.com or visit us at
www.lucasware.com
Special thanks to The Facility Group (www.facilitygroup.com), the design build firm for the PowerMax facilities, for allowing us to use their photos.
Other photos courtesy of OfficeMax. Jennifer is a trademark of Lucas Systems, Inc. All other product or company names are trademarks of their
respective companies. © 2007 Lucas Systems Inc.
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