Peet's Coffee & Tea: Automating Direct Order Fulfillment

Rapid growth in direct orders from individual customers had been putting pressure on Peet's largely unautomated shipping process. The company needed a high-speed, automated parcel handling system, which pointed to our FloShipper® system.

After customizing FloShipper® to meet customer needs and integrating it with existing software, we installed it at Peet's facility in Oakland, CA. Results included:

• 50% increase in customer orders
• 30% increase in employee productivity

Silicon Graphics: Doubling Production Capacity

Silicon Graphics, a major producer of high- and low-end computers, needed to massively upgrade its conveyor system to make it faster and more flexible. The manufacturer turned to FloStor, with whom they had worked before, for solutions.

"FloStor was involved from the beginning of this project and helped from concept to completion. We used to be a very labor intensive organization and there was a lot of manual handling."— Jim Mullen, Senior Facilities Planner and Project Manager at Silicon Graphics

Boxes were getting heavier (up to 40 pounds each) and an employee had to lift 100 to 200 of them per day. "By going to the conveyor system, we eliminated ever having to take the unit off the conveyor," explained Mullen.

As the new conveyor system took hold, daily production more than doubled, from 100-150 units to about 400 units. A fourth production line was added easily, and sales went from $700 million to more than $1 billion in a single year.

"When we got the whole system going, it worked really well. We had some really good subcontractors, and FloStor was one of the biggest."— Jim Mullen, Silicon Graphics