Founded more than 80 years ago, Barrett Distribution Centers gets up to speed in managing inventory for fulfilling e-commerce orders, thanks to the use of autonomous drones. 

Barrett Distribution Centers has been operating as a third-party logistics (3PL) provider long before that term was coined. Founded in 1941, the company also precedes the age of the omnichannel. Today, though, its offerings are aimed squarely at that ever-growing sector. 

Barrett’s services include direct-to-consumer fulfillment of e-commerce orders, transportation management, and retail compliance across multiple industries, including apparel and footwear, health and beauty, consumer packaged goods, food, grocery and automotive. The company operates more than 25 distribution locations across the country, offering more than 7 million square feet of warehouse space in key logistics centers in Greater Boston, New Jersey, New York, Baltimore, Memphis, Dallas and California. 

With so many facilities to oversee, Barrett faced the challenge of monitoring an immense amount of highly varied product. For years, warehouse staffers had been relying on traditional forklifts and scanners to manually monitor and count inventory. The procedure was lengthy and tedious, in addition to creating potential safety issues for workers. 

Meanwhile, the growing demand for e-commerce fulfillment meant that Barrett had to do a better job of tracking inventory within and across all of its distribution facilities, with an emphasis on processing individual shipments, or “eaches.” The current way of receiving, recording, handling and shipping product was clearly inadequate to the task. 

The answer lay in the use of technology that is still considered cutting-edge in the world of distribution: autonomous drones. In 2022, Barrett sought a partner that could supply such devices to carry out the regular monitoring of inventory at its facilities. 

Barrett chose Gather AI, a specialist in the use of warehouse drones for automating inventory monitoring, founded in 2018 by graduates of Carnegie Mellon University. The technology promised to lower the cost of inventory while boosting productivity and revenue. 

Read more: Full List of SupplyChainBrain's 100 Great Supply Chain Partners

Gather AI’s drones take pictures of pallet locations. Algorithms generated through machine learning then read the barcodes and accompanying text, and compare that information with what’s stored in the warehouse management system. 

The drones allow Barrett’s warehouse managers to view inventory data in real time from a web-based dashboard. They can then identify and rectify any inventory discrepancies, in a process that Gather AI claims is up to 15 times faster than manual cycle counting. The company says its drones are currently in operation in warehouses dedicated to third-party logistics, retail distribution, manufacturing, food and beverage, and health and wellness. 

Barrett says the Gather AI drones have already saved it $250,000 in material-handling equipment (MHE) costs. With the drones in operation, no MHE is required to be deployed high up in the racks, and the company has been able to reallocate six cycle counters to more fulfilling tasks. No longer do they need to ascend to the tops of racks in a scissors lift to scan stock. Inventory accuracy, as a result, has been improved by 70%, the company says, resulting in reduced shrinkage and the ability to handle greater volumes of product. And several Barrett’s customers have agreed to eliminate or reduce physical inventory counts. 

“Gather AI has been tremendous to work with,” says Jim Rapoza, Barrett’s vice president of business process optimization. He cites “significant improvement” in the speed at which the company can monitor inventory, especially in very narrow aisles, where it’s able to scan approximately 300 locations, or between 1,800 and 2,000 license plates, per flight hour. The increase in license-plate accuracy helps 3PLs such as Barrett to meet strict service-level agreements with their customer base. 

“We can’t do that with people,” Rapoza adds. The drone technology “allows us to enable team members to do more value-added activities, including researching variances, auditing, training and other things to support operations.” 

All of that has led to improvements in defective parts per million (DPPM) of up to 70%, “in a highly accurate facility,” Rapoza says. 

Resource Links:

Barrett Distribution Centers, https://www.barrettdistribution.com/

Gather AI, https://www.gather.ai/