Capacity LLC's Pick and Pack for the 21st Century

Dateline: Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This summer found us in the land of cheese, brats and beer. Capacity was there to acquire order processing technology to help cost-effectively process large pick-and-pack distributions.  Capacity ships weekly replenishment orders to thousands of WalMart stores on behalf of its Client under what is known as a DSDC ("Direct Store Delivery Consolidation") program, and invested in this technology to ensure that the short processing window and tight financial constraints were met.

A pick-to-light system at work.

Known in the industry as a "Put-to-Light" or "Pack-to-Light" system, this technology allows Capacity to pick bulk goods from reserve rack locations for a large group of orders and use lighted LED modules to quickly and accurately fill orders for individual stores.  Capacity purchased the system from Lightning Pick Technologies of Germantown, Wisconsin.  Before shipping our configured system to California, Lightning Pick hosted a "conference room pilot" for our team to test and finalize functionality.  Let's go!

The system installed in our LA warehouse

Here's a video about how our new system works.

Lightning Pick - Pick to Light

Rohan Bhobe, master developer at NJ HQ, worked together with colleague Sasmitha Kalathur to build and test the data interface in a remarkably short period of time.  He flew in from Newark for the conference room pilot.  The rest of our team flew in from around the country to take in a (surprise!) baseball game at Milwaukee's stunning Miller Park.  OK, so it was the last-place Brewers taking on the last-place Padres, but consider the following:

• Tickets for the seats 12 rows behind home plate were just $33 each!
• Two colleagues from Lightning Pick joined us for the game, giving us the chance to meet in person before the official meeting.
• Rohan had never been to a sports stadium before.  That's right folks, not a soccer stadium in Germany where he attended university, or a cricket match in India where he grew up.  First time for everything in life!
• Years ago, Scott and Jeff attended a playoff game in Anaheim together, with Scott's Angels taking on Jeff's Yankees.  Both teams have since crumbled miserably, but it was time for another game.
• Five types of 10 foot tall sausages ran an exciting foot race around the field during a mid-inning break, with bratwurst coming in first and chorizo finishing last.
• During the seventh inning stretch, two wholesome-looking couples danced the polka ON TOP OF BOTH DUGOUTS to strains of the Beer Barrel Polka ("Roll out the barrel, roll out the barrel of fun.  Roll out the barrel, we've got the blues on the run...")\

Missing from the scene were our previously-wholesome Wisconsin native friends (long since corrupted by life in the Big City):  Bob DeBaker from Becca Cosmetics and Caryn Blanc from transportation partner Triangle. By the way, Capacity's connection to Wisconsin goes back a ways. Our CFO Arlen Fish studied and sampled the local brews (in that order, we think) at UW-Madison.