The Client

LT Apparel Group is a New York-based, family-owned company founded in 1958, known for design, manufacture, and distribution of the highest quality children’s clothing. Its portfolio of brands includes adidas kids, Carhartt kids, and its own brand, French Toast, the leader in children’s school wear.

The Challenge

LT Apparel was seeking a warehousing partnership to support their business growth. They needed support to modernize their processes and further increase throughput capacity in their Browns Summit, NC facility. LT Apparel has an aggressive goal of supporting 150,000 units per day at peak season. LT Apparel wanted to simplify their distribution methods within the DC while also bringing 3PL business in-house and accommodating 10,000 additional SKU’s. All of these factors necessitated the need to expand their automated systems to support increased storage capacity and order volume growth.

The Solution

LT Apparel was looking for both short-term and long-term process optimization opportunities to improve product and order flow while building flexibility and capacity within their DC. They had already made a significant investment in automation in recent years and were looking for a new partner. Therefore, LT Apparel decided to partner with KPI Solutions to support further optimization and justification of their Browns Summit, NC DC.

Business goals included:

• Enabling order volume growth by bringing in SKUs from a 3PL
• Increasing order throughput with faster product turns
• Building system flexibility to support peak order volume
• Reducing reliance on labor
• Flexible design to support changes to order volumes, flows, etc.

KPI Solutions partnered with LT Apparel to evaluate their current-state processes and identify bottlenecks, while designing short and long-term operational strategies. KPI Solutions evaluated various order fulfillment methodologies, from conventional to automated storage options ranging from low to significant capital investment. Any chosen technology needed to support increased volume and meet a tight timeline for implementation before peak.

Through this evaluation of alternative solutions, the companies agreed to blend two different robotic technologies with an expansion to their AutoStore AS/RS, including Tompkins Robotics tSort robots. This solution provided expanded capacity in a smaller footprint with flexible storage for a rotating assortment of SKUs.

Solution Highlights:

• The AutoStore AS/RS includes a total of 38,000+ bins, 36 red line robots, 9 conveyor ports, and 5 VAS conveyor pick/replenishment ports.
• The tSort system includes 400+ destinations with 125 robots, with 5 AutoStore induct stations, and 4 manual induct stations.

The Value

• Additional storage capacity in their existing facility footprint.
• Optimized processes throughout the facility led to increased order fulfillment speed.
• Increased order throughput enabled order volume growth and ability to more easily meet peak demand.
• Flexibility to bring 3PL volume in-house, expanding their revenue stream.
• Additional SKUs from new business units can be added to inventory.
• Reduced labor reliance.