Material Handling Management

Wind Sorter Speeds Orders at Music Distributor

November 2001
Written by: MHM Staff

This distributor of CDs, videos, DVDs and tapes was turning away customers before installing a high-speed conveyor sortation system that increased throughput significantly.

Wind Sorter Speeds Orders at Music Distributor

When Dart Distributing of Chaska, Minnesota, had to turnaway new customers, it was frustrating. As a wholesale distributor and rackjobber in the music and video industry, Dart supplies major retailers with CDs,videos, audio cassettes and DVDs. With reported gross sales of $65 million,Dart’s volume had reached the point where supply could no longer meetdemand.

“We were dealing with more that 10,000 SKUs daily on amostly manual basis,” explains Tony Kirsch, Dart’s senior vicepresident. “Labor shortages and the availability of quality personnel hadresulted in our inability to take on any new customers or business. It took toomany man-hours to perform all the value-added services our customers had cometo expect. With the evolution of EDI and growing demands from retailers to cutdistribution costs, automation seemed the only way to go.”

Dart called Professional Control Corporation (PCC), aninnovator of high-performance order fulfillment solutions. PCC had justintroduced the Wind Sorter, a high-speed sortation system that was ideal forprocessing the small products that Dart distributed.