New Hope, Minn.-based online-only grocer SimonDelivers constantly evolves to meet the changing demands of its consumers. It has to, in order to survive in an environment where there are so many options available for its shoppers at brick-and-mortar stores.

Because of this, the retailer strives to make every order perfect, says Chris Servais, v.p. of operations. "When a customer goes to a traditional store, and something isn't in stock on the shelf, they can substitute it," explains Servais. "We're shopping for the customer on our racks and our shelves, and the fulfillment rate is so critical because we don't know which item is the key item."

Maintaining strong fill rates is no easy task, especially in the midst of SimonDelivers' constant evolution. The grocer processes between 1,200 and 1,500 unique orders daily—with each order made up of 40 to 42 items—and no two orders are alike.

What's more, SimonDelivers uses a combination of vendor channels to supply its inventory. Supervalu supplies about 60 percent. In addition, several suppliers manage their own inventory in the retailer's warehouse, such as its bread purveyors and some beverage vendors, which restock their picking locations and have SimonDelivers manage it when they're not in the facility.

Then there are the vendors that operate on a just-in-time basis.

"Our seafood vendor is a good example of that," says Servais. "We're supplied by Morey's Seafood; they can actually track our orders and deliver the exact amount we need, such as salmon fillets. Morey's will see that we requested 22 salmon fillets, and they will cut 22 salmon fillets in the evening, since our order cutoff time is 11 p.m. A plane from the West Coast carrying the salmon reaches Minneapolis around four or five each afternoon, and they will bring over the 22 salmon fillets at 2:30 in the morning."

SimonDelivers works with several vendors—particularly those that supply fresh food—this way to provide products with the highest level of freshness, while minimizing shrink.

The picking takes place in four major zones of the warehouse: a dry zone, cooler and freezer zones, and a zone with larger items for which SimonDelivers uses a label-picking process.

In the cooler and freezer areas, associates perform "pick to light" operations; they scan a bar code on the container that's linked to a customer order. A light flashing above a slot on the shelves indicates which items to select. The pickers will go to those items, pick them from the case, and then turn the light off and place those items in the container.

The "put to light" process is used in the dry grocery section. Six orders at a time are downloaded to the computer on a customized "shopping cart"—which is technology-enabled with radio frequency. A screen directs the shopper around the picking module, which displays where to go and what item to select. Upon returning to the cart, the user scans the item with a cordless scanner, and on that cart an area lights up instructing the shopper with which order to place the item.

With each order, products are picked from these zones, and those streams of products must merge in the delivery vehicle so it can depart on time.

Changes in the offing

Coordinating this in the midst of constant change was no easy task with SimonDelivers' previous warehouse management system (WMS).

"We'd figure out something this month that had to be changed to enhance the online grocery experience, but these changes were difficult or impossible to make," says Servais. "The old WMS was more like a black box. You didn't understand how it worked so you couldn't fix anything yourself, and any kind of changes the vendor made were very costly and very time-consuming."

Servais found the flexibility he needed in the Warehouse Advantage WMS from Eden Prairie, Minn.-based HighJump Software. "The solution offers more flexibility in terms of modifying the program," he says. "It's faster to do, and it's simple enough that if we had a developer—someone with appropriate skills on staff—we could do it ourselves. You just send them the changes you make so they can support it."

HighJump developed Warehouse Advantage to optimize warehouse processes such as receiving, put-away/flow-through, inventory management, order processing, replenishment/pick/pack, loading, and shipping. It minimizes travel paths with slotting/re-slotting functionality, speeds up picking execution with user-configured algorithms, and directs put-away to the appropriate bins based on product-handling characteristics.

"We see our quality and productivity numbers are the best they've ever been in our company's history," notes Servais. "I can definitely attribute part of that to the HighJump system, such as the gains we're seeing in terms of management and control of our internal fulfillment operations."

Which means fewer "do-overs," he says. "There are [fewer] exceptions, and that's one of the things that's very noticeable. We have less rework being done. An example would be what we call an 'additional pick,' which is not finding a product at the pick station when the system showed that we have it in the building. And minutes per order, SimonDelivers' primary productivity metric, have improved 15 percent since the WMS installation.

Additionally, fewer customers are finding missing parts to their orders. "Our fill rate has jumped from 99.85 percent to 99.93 percent, and we've eliminated the zero-picks. That equates to 13,000 more items that we delivered to customers this year than we would have before HighJump," observes Servais.

What makes Servais happiest about the system is that it he says it will accommodate any changes that the grocer might need to make in the future.

"Our goal is to save people time," he says. "Whatever features we dream up to add to our portfolio of services are geared toward that. To be able to offer that kind of service, you have to be confident in your ability to execute and get those orders through the system—in good shape and high quality—to the customers."