Corvus Robotics and Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits have agreed a strategic expertise partnership and expanded deployment of the Corvus One autonomous stock administration system throughout Southern Glazer’s distribution community.
Over the previous 18 months, Southern Glazer’s has deployed greater than 40 Corvus One autonomous drones throughout 9 distribution facilities nationwide, with continued enlargement deliberate.
The rollout helps Southern Glazer’s broader provide chain transformation initiative and reinforces its dedication to operational excellence throughout its community.
A full video case research detailing the multi-site deployment and measurable operational affect throughout Southern Glazer’s distribution community is offered right here.
Corvus One operates repeatedly inside energetic warehouse environments, autonomously flying aisles to scan and validate reserve storage areas with out disrupting case-picking operations. The result’s hands-free, high-frequency stock audits that sync instantly with Southern Glazer’s WMS, liberating the crew to deal with higher-value duties.
At Southern Glazer’s, the system has accomplished roughly 5,000 flights and recognized over 35,000 verified discrepancies throughout deployed amenities.
A Corvus One autonomous stock drone performs a cycle counting mission at Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits distribution middle in Raymore, Missouri.
Operational Throughput: Improved stock accuracy has contributed to a 100 foundation level enchancment in circumstances per hour, enabling sooner and extra environment friendly success of buyer orders.
Sixfold Stock Validation Enhance: Shifting from a quarterly depend cadence to biweekly turns throughout amenities, Southern Glazer’s has realized higher-frequency visibility that enables groups to determine and resolve discrepancies earlier than they affect choosing and outbound delivery.
Extra Environment friendly Use of Labor: Roughly 60 to 70 labor hours per week per web site have been reallocated from handbook cycle counting to higher-value operational priorities.
Stock groups deal with resolving verified discrepancies somewhat than performing broad handbook counts, utilizing the Corvus interface to assessment high-resolution pictures, label scans, and historic video logs tied to particular storage areas.
Karli Sage, vp, provide chain administration, expertise and engineering, Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits, says: “Throughout our community, stock accuracy instantly impacts how successfully we serve our clients.
“By rising the frequency and precision of our reserve stock validation, we’re figuring out points earlier, bettering fill charges, and enabling our groups to deal with proactive drawback fixing as an alternative of reactive counting. The velocity at which we’ve got scaled this expertise throughout 9 websites displays the worth it’s delivering to our operations.”
The system’s visible document of every scan offers searchable, time-stamped footage of pallet positions and license plate labels, enabling fast root-cause evaluation and training.
Verified discrepancies can embody misplaced pallets, lacking LPNs, or incorrect placements that, in beverage distribution, can signify important greenback worth per pallet.
Jackie Wu, CEO of Corvus Robotics, says: “Southern Glazer’s operates at a scale the place small enhancements in accuracy have significant downstream affect.
“Their crew has embraced autonomous stock as core infrastructure inside their provide chain transformation initiative. Scaling to 9 amenities with greater than 40 drones demonstrates robust operational buy-in and units a brand new benchmark for the way beverage distributors can modernize stock management with out slowing the ground.”
The collaboration contains common cross-site operational critiques, enabling Southern Glazer’s amenities to share greatest practices and repeatedly refine how autonomous stock is built-in into every day workflows.
As extra amenities come on-line, the businesses will proceed collaborating to standardize deployment fashions and efficiency benchmarks throughout the community.
For meals and beverage distributors managing excessive SKU counts, fast-moving case-picking environments and tight service degree expectations, frequent and autonomous reserve validation offers earlier detection of discrepancies, stronger fill efficiency and measurable enhancements in warehouse throughput.
