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The Challenge

In late 1995, Santa Clara, Calif.-based Bay Networks began looking for new ways to ship its world-class switching/routing, access, Internet protocol (IP) and network management products quickly and accurately to a growing list of customers around the world. The company knew that any delays in shipping could mean business lost to its competitors in the fast-paced networking solutions industry.

"We needed to develop an automated shipping operation that would allow us to deal with our immediate needs and would be sufficiently flexible to meet our future requirements as well," said Dave Sawyer, distribution specialist for bay Networks. "And since our customers' needs are always changing and growing, the ability to modify a new shipping system was a must."

Because the distribution of Bay Networks' products is expensive, Sawyer noted, the new shipping operation needed to be fast, efficient and cost-effective. Equally important, it had to fully handle peak shipping periods at the end of fiscal quarters, all while minimizing labor costs.

So Bay Networks engineers Lamont Doxtad and Charlie Lindert took a close look at the shipping operation in the company's 100,000-square-foot Sunnyvale, Calif., distribution facility. At the time, Bay Networks employed about 80 temporary and permanent warehouse and shipping staff.

After a careful review of its existing shipping operation and projections for future shipping volume, Doxtad and Lindert designed a new model for an automated warehouse and shipping operation that would be like no other. But what was needed to make the new shipping operation model work was a computerized shipping-manifest system that could process order information at a rate of one package every two seconds.

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