OPTIMIZATION THROUGH GRADUAL AUTOMATION FOR ULTA BEAUTY

The Challenge

Prior to partnering with the Cirrus Tech, ULTA was picking products manually with printed pick lists.  While they did have a WMS that handled the higher-level functions, the manual processes proved to cause a substantial loss of productivity, so much so that they were verging on slowing the growth of the company. In the ultra-competitive cosmetic and personal care market, ULTA was compelled to optimize their distribution process to offer optimal order quantities while providing a high service level and shorter delivery times.

ULTA’s challenges included:

The Approach

The collaboration with Cirrus Tech goes back to their first distribution center in Phoenix, AZ, when we provided processes, testing environments and training to transition day-to-day Warehouse IT operations to their internal IT department.

The success of this project resulted in a flawless and seamless transition and convinced ULTA to choose Cirrus Tech as a long-term partner to help the company increase the efficiency and the capacity of its warehouse step by step.

Picking Operations

We started with a pick to light cart in order to maximize productivity and throughput. The second system was a “Cart” controlled process and a “Vertical Carousel” controlled process. The picking process starts with file downloads from the host SAP system. These are referred to as IDOCs or file interfaces. There are 3 types of IDOCs/interfaces: the Material master interface, the Delivery interface and the STOCK TOs (or Replenishment interface). We implemented a system that had to be optimized for the daily execution of orders from 30-40 stores and anywhere between 500 to 3000+ SKUs and several quantities for each one.

Batch Management

In order to organize the picking activities in the warehouse, the Cirrus WCS provides users with an interactive screen. Through this screen, users can set a batch state to “authorize”, “unauthorized” or “close”. After a batch is created, picking can be executed only after a batch is authorized. During this process the received deliveries are copied into a “Workqueue” table and are made available for picking. When users unauthorized or close a batch, the same items are deleted from the workqueue.

Picking through the vertical carousel channel is executed in a different area of the warehouse. All the information related to the vertical carousels is stored in a separated database on the server. Separate screens are also provided for this functionality. The main difference between the main flow and the carousel picking is that through vertical carousels, users can pick items for all the stores in the batch simultaneously.

Sorters

The shipping sorters used at the two operating DCs feature a shoe-sorter in Phoenix and in Romeoville a belt sorter with pop-up wheels was implemented. Our Cirrus WCS assigns and directs sorter and collection instructions. ULTA uses “profile” based diverting, which means that, through the Cirrus WCS, they can define different store-to-lane assignments for different days of the week and store this information in the database.
Convincing Results

Cirrus Tech designed the automated warehouse in several phases hand in hand with ULTA, in order to enhance the company’s potential, one advancement at a time.

By partnering with Cirrus, ULTA now has a comprehensive Warehouse Control System in place that they are able to manage internally and has shown real operational benefits by reducing cost, improving productivity and increasing shipping accuracy.

What was once a bogged down process of picking a single store at a time has improved with the addition of 6 Order Carts. Rather than picking the orders for one store, an operator can now pick for 6 stores at once with a cart that is designed to handle the load. And rather than a printed sheet of paper, the operators now use handheld scanners to check barcodes and place the correct product in the proper stores bin.

Benefits