Southern Wine and Spirits of California

With operations in 35 markets and more than 14,000 team members, Southern serves suppliers from all over the world. The California division is the single largest wine and spirits distributor in the state— if not the country.

To uphold this mission, the distributor is always looking for innovative ways to enhance upon and leverage world-class supply chain capabilities to reduce costs, deliver optimal fulfillments and provide tailored customer service. Southern recognized that it could readily achieve these benefits and more, as well as prepare for future growth by tearing down its outdated Union City warehouse and building a new, fully automated facility in its place. Mark Booth, vice president of supply chain technology, Southern Wine & Spirits, said, “We were in a building that was outgrown, outdated and with no technology whatsoever. We had to take the next step and look towards the next 20 to 25 years of our business.”

Westfalia is a leading provider of logistics solutions for plants, warehouses and distribution centers, and W&H Systems is an experienced warehouse material handling systems integrator. Westfalia and W&H Systems developed the concept and design of Southern’s automation technology, managed implementation and ensured the successful start-up of the 334,000 square-foot, 55-foot-tall facility.

Fitted with Westfalia’s high-density automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS), Southern can store 24,750 pallets up to ten pallets deep. With four Westfalia storage and retrieval machines (S/RM) refilling pallets, each S/RM can process more than 80 pallets per hour. All pallets are triple-supported, which not only minimizes operational problems, but also provides more safety.

Westfalia’s Savanna.NET® warehouse execution system (WES) brings the system together, optimizing material flow and picking within the AS/RS, and ensuring inventory accuracy and rapid order fulfillment. Each operator and picker is equipped with a hand-held computer running Savanna.NET®—giving operators the ability to control replenishment activity as well as retrieve empty pallet stacks and trash bins.

For the materials handling portion of the operation, Southern is utilizing W&H Systems’ material handling system, which incorporates an extensive conveyor system including 13 pick lanes (11 full case, two split case) and a double sortation system including pre-merges, pre-sorters, mid-merges, a high-rate combiner, and sortation to 12 fluid loading doors. This automated system comprises a bottle room pick module, integrated with a voice pick system and a comprehensive scanning and monitoring system. The conveyor system is also integrated with the AS/RS, and efficiently moves and manipulates 300 pallets per hour and up to 18,000 cases per hour—housing more than 1,700 SKUs. This high-performance, integrated conveyor system achieves production rates of more than 6,000 cases per hour with productive large batch picking. The material handling system is controlled by W&H Systems’ SHIRAZ Warehouse Controls System (WCS), which is directly integrated with Savanna.NET®.