Efficiency soars in automated warehouse

Zenith Aviation provides spare parts to regional airlines and business aviation as well as consignment parts services. The company’s headquarters in Fredericksburg, Va., has spent recent years converting traditional racking and mezzanine shelving systems to automated inventory storage and retrieval systems. As a result, the company has reduced the floor space required for parts storage, increased productivity and improved pick accuracy to 99.9%.

Due to the nature of the aviation aftermarket parts business, SKU fluctuation is inevitable. Parts are rarely, if ever, reordered and restocked. Instead, Zenith’s core business model has been to find aircraft operators that are upsizing, downsizing or going out of business, and purchase their remaining parts for these platforms.

“It is important that our system is able to handle a large influx of new parts,” says president Robert Stanford. “When we make a purchase, we retrieve an average of 3,000 to 4,000 line items.”

With the facility’s traditional storage systems at near capacity, Zenith first invested in 11 horizontal carousels and two vertical lift modules (VLMs). Relocating parts from 12,000 square feet of shelving to 4,688 square feet recovered 60% of floor space. The concept of goods-to-person parts delivery eliminated unproductive walk and search time and productivity soared as a result.

The company has since expanded its storage capabilities, and now uses 23 horizontal carousels and six VLMs (Kardex Remstar, kardexremstar.com) connected by inventory management software. The 50,000-square-foot warehouse now has a parts storage capacity of more than 750,000 line items. On-site inventory has grown from 20,000 line items (SKUs) and 3 million individual pieces to more than 41,000 SKUs that equal more than 5 million individual pieces. With the added capacity, the consignment program took off.

“These machines fit perfectly into our smart growth business model,” Stanford says. “We made a commitment to our clients that we would support their aircraft long into the future, and we have set a course for smart, scalable growth to make good on that commitment. With the added capacity available in the system, now there is no deal that’s ‘too big’ for us.”