F
ounded shortly after Prohi-
bition, Heaven Hill Brands
(Heaven Hill) is the largest
family-owned and operated distilled
spirits producer and marketer in
America. Their brands have grown
beyond the company’s traditional roots
as a Bourbon distiller to become the
country’s sixth largest overall distilled
spirits producer and marketer with a
portfolio of well-known, innovative
and relevant products. Over the past
80 years, Heaven Hill has expanded
its export business to ship products
to over 60 countries worldwide and is
now the world’s second largest holder
of Bourbon Whiskey with an inventory
in excess of 1.3 million barrels.
CHALLENGE
With significant growth in acquisi-
tions, Heaven Hill was quickly running
out of space for storing finished case
goods on site and soon would need
to begin storing its products in mul-
tiple off-site warehouses. In addition,
Heaven Hill historically operated with
manual processes which were not
efficient as the company grew. Heaven
Hill decided to look for a fully auto-
mated solution that would increase
warehouse storage capacity and scale
as the company expanded its bottling
facility.
SOLUTION
Heaven Hill was prompted to turn
to an automated solution to better
manage inventory and chose West-
falia Technologies, Inc.’s (Westfalia)
high-density automated storage and re-
trieval system (AS/RS), which included
an automated layer picking system.
and Heaven Hill engineering teams
worked closely together to incorporate
Westfalia’s AS/RS and Savanna.NET®
Warehouse Execution System (WES)
into existing equipment and systems.
This harmonization allowed the teams
to phase in different pieces of the inte-
gration without disrupting workflows
and processes of the fully functioning
warehouse which then allowed Heav-
en Hill to utilize different pieces of
Savanna.NET and the AS/RS in small
capacity.
RESULTS
With the help of Westfalia, Heaven
Hill installed four tandem storage and
retrieval machines (S/RM) and one
fully automated layer picker—increas-
ing Heaven Hill’s storage capacity by
40 percent. The Savanna.NET® WES
simplifies and controls the entire ware-
housing process, while reducing the
complexity of using several different
“function-specific” applications. As a
result, Heaven Hill has fully condensed
operations into 8 to 10 hour shipment
cycles, resulting in the shipment of
approximately 50,000 cases of products
each day. By automating previously
manual processes, Heaven Hill can
ship products 400 percent faster than
before. Additionally, Heaven Hill has
been able to cut down dock times by
49 percent.
SYSTEM FEATURES:
Technology:
•
•
•
Savanna.NET® Warehouse
Execution System
4 tandem Storage and Retrieval
Machines
Automated layer picking system
Size:
•
AS/RS occupies the 90,934 sq. ft.
warehouse
Capacity:
•
•
•
27,000 pallet storage positions
Layer pick system moves 50 layers
per hour and stores 1,910 SKUs
Induct/output 103 pallets per hour
per S/RM
System Benefits:
•
•
•
Increased storage capacity by 40
percent
Improved turnaround time by 49
percent
Increased throughput times for
shipment by 400 percent
“We expect future growth for
both our company and our
brands and Westfalia and their
Savanna.NET® WES really
gives us the systems to be able
to accommodate that growth,”
says Kevin Andrew, inventory
and customer service manager,
Heaven Hill.
Throughout the six month imple-
mentation period, the Westfalia
www.WestfaliaUSA.com
The Satellite Review
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