Automation That Delivers

Fast Facts

5 Identified and resolved total incidents in four months.

Avoided 17 hours of critical unplanned downtime

$42k estimated savings in idle labor.

TACKLING CONSUMER DEMAND

A U.S. retailer was beginning to feel the effects of increased consumer demand. To keep up with the market, they sought out a new technology solution to help achieve an even more efficient cost per case shipped. With distribution centers running harder than ever before and a shortage of skilled labor helping to maintain them, maintenance windows and unplanned downtime has been even more disruptive to operations, significantly impacting costs. In addition, supply chain disruptions causing greater lead times on replacement equipment and machinery parts has created a critical challenge in regard to keeping systems running properly and efficiently.

As a long time Honeywell Intelligrated customer, the organization looked to Honeywell as an innovation partner and sought out a warehouse automation software and fulfillment solution. The customer agreed to implement Honeywell Forge Connected Warehouse as an early adopter, in partnership with Honeywell. 

EXCEEDING CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS

Honeywell Forge Connected Warehouse is a prescriptive analytics solution that combines siloed data from islands of automation and separate software tools designed to provide greater visibility for warehouse and supply chain executives. The industrial grade software ultimately enables portfolio-wide savings across multiple operations and enables near real-time collaboration across operations and maintenance systems and teams. 

The retailer wanted to first explore the technology and quantify the benefits of the EPM analytics before scaling to their full network, so they implemented the solution at one of their key sites for 6 months. Before the end of their 6-month trial, the company was able to exceed their success criteria.

Honeywell Intelligrated Equipment and Services, IRIS (a CMMS system integrated to provide automation work order generation) and Honeywell Forge analytics technologies, helped this large organization gather control system, power and vibration sensor data from complex assets. From there the company was able to gain full visibility and apply analytics to go from time-based maintenance to proactive condition-based maintenance.

This customer began utilizing sensor and control system data from a select set of critical assets directly responsible for accurate sortation – including Intelligrated sliding shoe sorter, merges, recirculation, induction and other components. Honeywell Forge Connected Warehouse captured and consolidated data then sent it for analysis with cloud-based Machine Learning (ML). Within the first 4 months, the company was able to gain greater visibility into throughput rates, reducing unplanned maintenance and increasing reliability. The maintenance team was able to resolve 5 total incidents involving bent drive shafts, failing bearings, failing rollers, and foreign debris that posed a significant safety risk. They also avoided 17 hours of unplanned downtime, saving an estimated $40,000 in idle labor, and increased system capacity.* Operationally, management benefited from full visibility into key performance metrics and maintaining asset uptime increased capacity by over 150,000 cases, or roughly $7.5 million of product. 

CONNECTIONS WORTH KEEPING

Honeywell Forge Connected Warehouse is designed to provide consolidated performance metrics, actionable alerting, and decision-making recommendations helping distribution center leaders optimize their labor, lower their cost per case shipped and maximize their maintenance efficiency and system reliability.

This company worked closely together with the Honeywell customer success team to set financial success criteria and track performance against goals. Customer success experts also assisted with adoption and direction on key issues, making implementation efficient and organized for the customer.

What’s next for the large retailer and Honeywell? An enterprise-wide roll out of the software technology is being evaluated. We anticipate with the roll out, the company has the capability of unlocking the equivalent capacity of 1/3 of a distribution center without having to build a new site, beating the lead time, ROI and capital investment of a new distribution center by leveraging existing assets.** They may also avoid annual idle labor costs from critical unplanned downtime, saving millions of dollars – at scale.