Company Profile: 

Subaru of New England is the exclusive indipendent distributor for Subaru cars and parts for the six New England states. They were founded in 1971 by Ernie Boch Sr. Today it is led by his son Ernie Boch Jr., who serves as the company’s CEO/President. 

In 2014 Subaru of New England built a new 165,000 ft2 state-of-art facility, located in Norwood, Massachusetts which serves as the company’s headquarters, as well as training and distribution center. The facilty is certified LEED Platinum, by hte U.S. Green Building Council and includes a 95,000 ft,2 high-bay warehouse, which is 42% larger than their previous facility’s warehouse, allowing them to expand storage and distribution dramatically. 

Problem:

Subaru of New England serves 65 Subaru dealers throughout New England. Dealer’s parts orders are required quickly to serve clinets and service needs. Parts orders are sent to Subaru of New England, who must pick them quickly and accurately and then have them delivered to dealers the next morning. 

Previously parts were stored and picked out of a horizontal carousel system, which occupied too much floor space, was too inefficient and presented ergonomic risks when having to access parts. In addition, picking accuracy was in need of improvement as workers had to search within the carousels to find the correct parts needed. These reasons led Subaru of New England to choose a state-of-art vertical storage & picking system to complement their new facility as it was under construction. 

Solution:

Modula was selected to help Subaru of new England achieve their goals and improvments needed for their parts storage and picking operations. A total of 9 VLM units are used to store a wide range of parts. The system is engineered to provide Subaru of New England within excess of 11,000 unique storage locations across the 9 Modula units. 

in total, the system provides 10,228 ft.3 & 17,722 ft.2 of storage, all within a system footprint of only 958 ft.2. The VLM system operates as 3 pods 3 VLM units each and also includes a Modula put-to-light vatch order picking system, allowing up to 60 orders to be processed at one time. 

Currently Subaru of new England is able to achieve picking rates in excess of 1,600 lines picked per day.

The Modula VLM system has helped Subaru of New England to reach the efficiency required in their picking and replenishment operations so that they can fulfill orders and meet their deadlines by the end of the day to get their orders shipped and delivered the very next day.