Scaling up warehouse operations with WCS

Boot Barn is the US’s largest retailer of western and work apparel, footwear and accessories with over 200 stores and three eCommerce websites. The retailer currently offers more than 8,000 styles of boots, jeans, hats and more, from a range of leading brands. 

Industry: Western and Work Apparel Retail
Location: Kansas, USA

Facing a rise in demand, Boot Barn decided to expand its Kansas distribution center (DC) by 50 percent to support its eCommerce efforts. Boot Barn wanted to take the opportunity to optimize operations. This meant:

• Overcome inadequate storage capacity
• Increase throughput speed per hour
• Reduce labor shortages during peak seasons

Since Boot Barn already successfully adopted Körber’s Warehouse Management System (WMS), the retailer implemented Körber’s Warehouse Control System (WCS) at the Kansas facility. This allowed Boot Barn to:

• Integrate the WCS with the WMS
• Control all their MHEs
• Add a goods-to-person conveyor layout including 12 intelligent diverts driving 48 picking zones

Boot Barn realized a number of key benefits from adding the WCS as a single point of control:

• 50 percent picking improvement compared to previous operation
• 25 percent increase in throughput speed
• Reduced need for hiting seasonal staff
• End-to-end visibility of the entire material flow

Founded in 1978, Boot Barn has grown to become America’s largest western retailer with major DCs in California and Kansas. In 2017, Boot Barn decided it was time to expand its Kansas facility by 45,000 sq. feet to support its growing eCommerce business. It was clear the retailer needed an intelligent Warehouse Control System (WCS) to optimize the operation of the automation system. Having previously implemented Körber’s Warehouse Management System (WMS), Boot Barn saw the benefit of choosing the same vendor for a WCS. The installation went smoothly with almost zero impact on the business, and has continued to perform successfully since. Having a single point of control for Boot Barn’s entire MHE system helped the business reach its goals of increased throughput and production, reduced downtime and staffing costs.