100 GREAT SUPPLY CHAIN PARTNERS L.L. Bean: A Century of Keeping Pace With Customers’ Evolving Needs L.L.Bean has seen a lot of change in its 100-year history. From its beginnings as a catalog merchant, the company has grown into a global, multi-channel retailer with physical stores and e-commerce channels, in addition to its popular catalog business. But some things haven’t changed — in particular, the company’s loyal fan base and commitment to customer service. Keeping those customers happy can be a distribution challenge. Last year, L.L.Bean shipped more than 14 million orders from its dis-tribution center in Freeport, Maine. That’s an average of about 45,000 orders a day. Yet close to 60% of those orders are processed in the six weeks before Christmas. During peak, the company ships nearly 1 million packages a week. A few years back, L.L.Bean found that both its e-commerce and store fulfillment D.C.s were reaching ca -pacity and would soon strain the company’s ability to grow. At the same time, it was being pushed to speed up processing in the D.C. so as to fulfill commitments for on-time delivery. Operating in a labor-con-strained region of the country, the company wanted to reduce the amount of seasonal help required to fulfill orders during peak. L.L.Bean turned to Fortna Inc. for help. After detailed analysis, the decision was made to embark on a long-term, multi-step approach to transform L.L.Bean’s distribution operations for greater efficiency and improved costs. First, a replenishment sorter was in-stalled to speed up the process and free up space. Next, Fortna worked with L.L.Bean to install a multi-level pick module that made more space available, and order picking more ef-ficient and accurate. Then came the more challenging part of the project: shutting down L.L.Bean’s store dis-tribution center, and merging those orders into the e-commerce D.C. in order to get synergies of inventory and personnel. But the e-commerce D.C. would require a complete over-haul, requiring: • Converting to processing orders in waves, to take advantage of picking efficiencies, • Implementing a tote-handling sys-tem so orders would flow better, 34 | AUGUST 2020 | SUPPLYCHAINBRAIN.COM