Case Study: 9 to 5 Seating achieves 4x production capacity and 40% productivity gain with The Raymond Corporation

9 to 5 Seating Optimizes Facility with Raymond Handling Solutions

9 to 5 Seating built a 100,000-square-foot LEED Gold facility in Hawthorne, Calif., with the aggressive goal of quadrupling production while maintaining its 48-hour made-to-order shipping promise. To meet that challenge, 9 to 5 Seating partnered with Raymond Handling Solutions, a Sales and Service Center of The Raymond Corporation, to reengineer material flow and specify equipment including Raymond lift trucks, conveyors and a very narrow aisle (VNA) racking and pick module system.

The Raymond Corporation’s team designed a U-shaped handling process that integrates Model 4250 stand-up counterbalanced trucks, Swing-Reach trucks, Model 8400 pallet trucks, a Model 7400 Reach-Fork and automated conveyors tied into the ERP system. Raymond’s solution streamlined receiving, VNA storage, order picking and shipping, boosting productivity by more than 40% and cutting handling touches by about four, while improving throughput and order visibility.

9 to 5 Seating

Dara Mir

President