System Report: Real-time tasking at CarParts.com

When it comes to achieving a real-time warehouse operation, CarParts.com’s new DC in Las Vegas comes close to the concept of being able to adjust warehouse fulfillment tasks on the fly.

This isn’t real-time in the sense of split-second, hard control over machines, but fast enough so that the DC’s software can digitally divvy out tasks to warehouse associates and be proactive about frequent inventory slotting.

According to Michael Huffaker, chief operating officer for CarParts.com, the company’s goal was to create a more effective warehouse software platform for its Las Vegas area DC, including use of digital twin software to figure out what type of automation speeds and packaging capacity the facility should have.

With a legacy DC in Las Vegas headed off lease back in 2023, the company, an e-commerce provider of automotive parts and accessories, began assessing a new, larger DC in Vegas with better systems to meet service levels and growing demand, while also finding cost efficiencies in areas like picking and packing.

The focus began with evaluating software options at the warehouse execution system (WES) level, and eventually, outfitting the DC with some new automation, including a two-story pick module and conveyor system. But the journey began with software, with the new Vegas site as the test case.

“What I was looking for is an execution system that can task our employees in real time,” says Huffaker.

An operations leader at CarParts.com knew of a WES with real-time tasking (inVia Robotics), so that software was evaluated and chosen for the project. However, the system was selected for its software capabilities, without deploying the goods-to-person mobile robots that the supplier also offers.

CarParts.com began testing the software at its legacy DC in 2023, experimenting with the software’s batch picking capabilities and using its digital twin module to assess throughput needs and what type of supporting automation and equipment like new shelving or pack stations would maximize the benefits of the new WES.

The WES works on top of the CarParts.com warehouse management system (WMS), which holds master data, but it is the inVia WES, called Logic, that manages picking and orchestrates order filling with other warehouse processes like replenishment and packing, while also consolidating orders coming from different zones. The real-time tasking eliminates small bits of wasted time throughout each shift.

For example, better order consolidation means packers are no longer waiting on small items that need to be packed up with larger items, with a bottleneck of larger parts in front of their stations.

For managers, it provides a dashboard to monitor order fulfillment progress, and see trends that might call for action, like assigning more people to pack out if picking starts to run too far ahead of packing.

“The software has really changed the game as far as smarter labor allocation and in managing our pick flows overall,” says Huffaker.

Automotive parts e-commerce

CarParts.com is a pioneering company in its e-commerce segment. The company can trace its roots as a parts distributor back to the mid-1990s, and launched its first e-commerce site in 2000.

The company sells both collision and mechanical parts, the vast majority shipped direct-to-consumer. It serves automotive enthusiasts, home mechanics and others who maintain or want to make improvements to their vehicles.

While the business has some seasonality, Huffaker describes CarParts.com as a business with a “long-tail” inventory challenge, since customers highly prize stock availability, and so many makes, models, and vehicle years need to be covered. Some parts turn quicker than others, says Huffaker, like a bumper cover for a popular vehicle model, but at the end of day, the company needs to stock a very broad SKU mix to attract and serve its customers.

“We’re in a long-tail business segment, because having the parts in stock that our customers need is crucial to them,” says Huffaker. “We have to be highly accurate as well, and offer reasonably fast delivery, but actually having the needed parts is super important.”

This long tail presents challenges at the DC level, Huffaker adds. Some popular parts are simply too large to store in a tote or bin in an automated item picking solution. Then, you have the issue of item velocity. While some of 38,000 SKUs the DC handles are faster movers, others are slower movers best stored and picked from shelving or rack.

The WES, explains Huffaker, knows the current “velocity band” each SKU falls into and uses this understanding to enable a proactive approach to inventory slotting, with small changes to item location interleaved into other tasks.

To accommodate the inventory characteristics, the new DC was designed to use multiple picking strategies and storage mediums. The majority of the smaller, faster moving items are stored and picked from a two-level pick module with supporting conveyor. However, some larger parts are picked from rack using orderpickers, while many faster moving but larger items are stored on shelving.

Huffaker explains that once the inVia software was tested at the legacy site, the digital twin capabilities were used to help assess issues such as conveyance needs (the conveyor has easily adjusted speed levels, for example, to accommodate peak days), as well as the number of pack out stations needed.

“Ultimately, it’s the hardware plus the software that brings the maximum benefits,” says Huffaker. “We opted to build a pick module, and add some special conveyance, and other steps like redesigning the pack areas. We ended up doing a bunch of things on the automation side of things to attain the goals we wanted to achieve with the warehouse execution system.”

The new DC, at 203,000 square feet, is larger than the legacy site it replaced, and importantly, it’s significantly more efficient both in terms of picking productivity and space utilization, since the two-story pick module makes good use of the building’s 36-foot clear height.

The new DC’s storage was also designed with more ground-level, shelf-like storage positions to hold some faster moving oversized parts, so they could be picked faster versus being stored at greater heights in pallet rack.

Picking meets proactive slotting

The new DC and its systems have improved picking speed and efficiency in multiple ways, explains Huffaker, including the WES’s real-time tasking, batch picking, and proactive slotting, and on the automation side, the two-level pick module with supporting conveyor.

Compared to traditional picking in aisles, a pick module reduces the travel time needed to pick items, since associates stay within a compact zone of the module, with a conveyor system to take away picked order cartons or totes.

The WES dynamically assigns tasks to associates to maintain a smooth flow of work across picking, packing and replenishment. It also prioritizes orders, helping CarParts.com meet service level agreements (SLAs), even during busier times of the year. Additionally, the system supports batch picking. When combined with dynamic slotting, these capabilities help speed up picking, says Huffaker, since there is less travel overall, with efficient pick paths.

“It lets me keep the faster moving items on lower positions so that pick times are reduced,” he says. “With the proactive slotting, the ground-level slots will always be the higher velocity items, and the higher up slots will be for the lower velocity SKUs, and over time, you get more efficient pick paths based on that.”

The WES also handles order consolidation where, for instance, a smaller item like a mirror or a bag of fasteners can be joined up with a larger item like a body panel.

The WES also speeds up workflows by providing a dashboard that monitors task progress, and it will highlight if a task is taking longer than expected, with the ability to drill down to the associate level to see what the hold up is. Additionally, a broader view of how work is accumulating helps make decisions like reassigning associates from picking to packing or vice versa.

Before WES, says Huffuker, it used to take three supervisors to manage the flow of work and find and fix problems, says Huffaker. Now, the new DC has a “command center” desk with three flat screens—one for the WES dashboard, another with live feeds from a few cameras at key points in the DC’s material flow, and another displaying the dashboard for the warehouse control system (WCS) to monitor the conveyor/sortation system. This helps the operation run smoothly with less supervision, explains Huffaker.

“One person really can see the entirety of the floor and go work the issues in real time,” Huffaker says.

Other efficiency gains

The associates on the floor, rather than taking task direction from the same WES dashboard supervisors leverage or the underlying WMS, have a streamlined user interface app for mobile devices and tablets called PickMate, also from inVia.

PickMate uses simple visual cues like color codes and product images to support accurate picks and color-coded labels for inventory locations.

The device-focused software also displays live productivity metrics, allowing associates to adjust their pace to meet performance goals. The streamlined, colorful UI is easy to learn, reports Huffaker, which helps with on-boarding new employees and with accuracy.

“My first time on the system, I was picking over 100 units an hour after my first 15 minutes, and that’s going from not knowing the UI and just strapping on the device for a test,” says Huffaker. “We don’t use a lot of temp labor, but like any warehouse environment, there is associate turnover, so what this software allows us to do is bring someone new onto the team and have them at three-quarters productivity within a couple of days.”

Huffaker says order picking at the new DC is “far more productive” than the legacy site, but it’s a hard to compare since the new DC has the pick module, more conveyance and other design elements like storing more SKUs at ground level. The WES software plays a key role, coordinating tasks and generating optimized pick paths, while helping managers spot slowdowns before they develop into larger problems or labor waste.

The cumulative changes make for a more productive, cost-efficient DC that can handle more volume, Huffaker says, without a huge investment in high-end robotics or automation. For CarParts.com, this blend of WES with conventional automation, is delivering on higher productivity and cost effectiveness compared to the legacy, more manual site.

“We focused on having the right level of automation for our business to complement the software and decision-making tools we now have,” he says. “What we’ve proven with this project is that with the well-designed conveyance, the warehouse execution system, and the pick module and way we’ve set up the pack stations, we are able to get a much better cost profile for the operation and generate the return on investment that we want, under the payback period we were looking for.”

Driving efficiency at CarParts.com

Multiple storage areas and picking and packing zones are coordinated with WES software.

CarParts.com’s latest fulfillment center in Las Vegas, which opened in summer of 2024, features a two-story pick module, as well as use of automated conveyor/sortation, with order picking and related workflows managed by a warehouse execution system (WES) software system.

Most goods arrive at the DC floor-loaded in containers at the receiving area dock doors (1) and are manually unloaded using telescoping conveyor. Some inventory, such as brake rotors or door glass, arrive on pallets, while some SKUs come in wooden crates, so for certain goods, unloading is by lift truck.

The unloaded goods are then received and processed in the nearby receiving area (2). Depending on factors including the dimensions and weight of a SKU and its velocity, the WES will drive system-directed putaway.

The nonconveyable items are stored in a large area of racked storage (3) used to store and pick these larger items, such as body panels or bumper covers. The picking of these larger items is done by operators on orderpickers or pallet riders. Some reserve storage also is held in this area.

Most other goods are directed for putaway into another racked storage area for conveyable items (5). The goods in this area are leveraged to replenish the picking locations in the site’s two-story pick module (4), though this zone also has a row with high-velocity carton flow rack for efficient picking of fast-moving items.

An automated takeaway conveyor runs near the right-side of the pick module, and alongside the conveyables storage area, to transport completed orders to the packing area for small items (6), known as “small pack.”

The conveyor system also has a lane with a digital weigh scale and a print-and-apply station, to process certain orders that are already in a shippable carton and just need a label and a weight check.

This small pack area also contains an order consolidation point (7) with a put wall to consolidate orders. The conveyance in the small pack connects to an automated shipping sorter (8) to transport packed and labeled orders to the appropriate dock door for shipping.

The larger nonconveyable items have their own pack out area (9). These larger goods are manually packaged, labeled and staged for shipment at one of the two dock doors used for shipping larger items (10), located right at the edge of this zone. 

CarParts.com

Location: Las Vegas, Nevada

Products handled: Automotive aftermarket parts and accessories, including both collision and mechanical parts.

Number of associates: On average, about 146, but higher during peaks

Square footage: 202,000 square feet

Shift: Two shifts, four days per week (Monday through Thursday), with one weekend daytime shift, which runs Friday to Sunday.

Throughput: The DC regularly ships 6,000 customer orders per day, and more during peak.

System suppliers

WES software: inVia Robotics

Systems integration: Bastian Solutions

Conveyor/sortation: Overall design and controls software layer is from Bastian, with various subsystems from FMH Conveyors: Flow-Turn; ModSort/Regal Rexnord; Panther, Ryson and Wipotech

Lift trucks: The Raymond Corp.