A Party of Thousands

Lia sophia is a jewelry company with products sold through a national network of independent sales contractors, known as Advisors, at jewelry parties (roughly analogous to Tupperware parties). Headquartered in Wood Dale, Ill. (near Chicago), the company’s objective is to provide exceptional support for its independent Advisors at all times.

Lia sophia sells exclusively through Advisors who receive catalogs throughout the year. Twice a year, lia sophia introduces a new product line and provides Advisors with the new literature. Generally, there’s a sales spike after the launch of a new line, but the busiest time of year is November through December. The company has experienced a high rate of growth, largely through strong branding efforts focusing on quality and affordable pricing for fashion-forward jewelry. Today, there are thousands of independent Advisors hosting jewelry parties, and additional Advisors join the network each month.

Strong growth in business placed incredible pressure on lia sophia’s 60,000-square foot facility in Bensenville, Ill. This operation was responsible for receiving bulk product, which was then inspected for quality, packaged, picked to order and then shipped to Advisors.

All material handling and order fulfillment processes were completely paper-based, and rising demand had completely exceeded the operation’s capacity.

“Paper pick tickets were very inefficient, and in general, we had outgrown the way we were doing things,” says Tom Lang, senior director of operations for lia sophia. “We needed to find a better way to handle extremely high pick densities from a smaller SKU base. Shortening lead times was a big part of our project, so we could better support our independent Advisors and their customers.”

Optimizing Fulfillment

In 2006, a new, automated 200,000-square foot distribution center was built to meet rising order volume. Packaging would remain at the original facility.

Phase 1 of the project went live in October 2006, with approximately 60% of the DC’s space being used. As the incoming holiday rush quickly stretched capacity, it became clear that Phase 2 needed to be moved up to complete building the new DC.

The new facility handles 1,200 SKUs at any given time. When Advisors place orders through the Web, an order management system from QC Software plans order picking using cartonization rules to optimize fulfillment to the best picking areas. The software’s warehouse control system module routes the containers to A-frames, a pick-to-light system, or both as required.

Phase 1 featured new A-frame technology from SI Systems, which handles the top 50% of lia sophia’s SKUs and 85% of its total volume. The mounting pressure of continually rising order volume prompted the addition of a second A-frame dispenser in Phase 2. The A-frames are mirrored for redundancy, and work can be balanced between the two.

Lia sophia uses a pick-to-belt solution from SI Systems to handle its very high volume of split-case/item-oriented picking. Orders are then sent to a pick-to-light area to pick the medium velocity SKUs; this system can also help process orders when the A-frames are running at maximum capacity.

The pick-to-light system, provided by Lightning Pick Technologies, consists of approximately 1,200 light modules across eight zones. This pick-to-light line was eventually expanded to support out-ofseason product lines, too.