ASICS America Recovers Misplaced Inventory 60% Faster with Corvus One®
Nightly autonomous flights cycle count two high-velocity storage areas 6x more often in ASICS' primary North American distribution center serving retail, wholesale and e-commerce.
ASICS America video transcript
Kyle Koestler, Senior Director of Distribution and Transportation, ASICS America Corporation
If you lose something, it may take you six months to recover it. So the fewer situations and fewer instances where we have that fire drill where it's like, oh my gosh, we have to go find this, then the better off we're going to be.
We had these areas, like the one behind me, where we populate a lot of our returns goods that has a lot of hands in and out of it. And every time a human touches it is opportunity for something to go wrong. And so that's where we needed to find a new way to recover that inventory sooner.
Angela Williford, Inventory Control Operations Manager, ASICS America Corporation
Corvus Robotics is awesome. The drone is fresh, it's new. It's quicker, it's faster, it's counting a lot more than the person can, and it's tripling what they're counting and it's doing it in 20 minute increments.
Kyle Koestler, Senior Director of Distribution and Transportation, ASICS America Corporation
Corvus helped in multiple aspects. I figure we're recovering inventory about 60% faster than before, so that's fewer exceptions, fewer canceled orders, happier customers.
Sergio Vasquez, Distribution Center Director, ASICS America Corporation
Well, the frequency, when we go from twice a year to be counting on a monthly basis, means that the accuracy level will increase, but also at the same time, the opportunities to offer that inventory right there to the customer.
Kyle Koestler, Senior Director of Distribution and Transportation, ASICS America Corporation
You don't want to have to count a thousand locations to find the four or five that have problems. So if we have the opportunity to have Corvus One do all of that heavy lifting for us, then that user can handle those five, and then they can go on to other things.
Angela Williford, Inventory Control Operations Manager, ASICS America Corporation
Now we can just look at the footage and we can tell exactly what's going on with it in the locations before we have to send someone out. If it's something that we can correct from the desk, we'll correct it then.
Kyle Koestler, Senior Director of Distribution and Transportation, ASICS America Corporation
When you quantify this, you're looking at about 200 hours a month in labor savings, just on the counting alone, that can be repurposed in other productive areas.
Sergio Vasquez, Distribution Center Director, ASICS America Corporation
In the last three months, we have found a total of 26 cases that were misplaced. It's over 200 pairs of footwear that could negatively impact the customer at the end of the day.
Kyle Koestler, Senior Director of Distribution and Transportation, ASICS America Corporation
We're one of the last touches before the consumer. Get the order to the consumer, get them what they ordered, get them when they want it, make them get out there and put some shoes on and go running.
Overview
In omnichannel footwear and apparel distribution, one pool of inventory serves every sales channel. The same box on the same shelf can fill a wholesale order, restock a store or ship to an e-commerce customer, depending on which order comes in first. That shared pool is what makes the model efficient (less safety stock, and fewer units stranded in a channel that doesn't need them), and it only works when the inventory record matches what's on the shelf, because a misplaced box is missing for every channel at once.
ASICS America Corporation runs that model out of its primary North American distribution center in Byhalia, Mississippi, an 855,000 square foot facility holding 3 million units across about 44,000 SKUs for wholesale accounts, ASICS full price and outlet stores, and e-commerce customers. Returns come back into the same building and get restocked for the next order. With that much handling in one place, ASICS needed to find misplaced inventory faster in the areas that see the most touches, without adding labor or lift traffic to very narrow aisles.
The Challenges
Infrequent Cycle Counts
Under the ASICS cycle count policy, the singles area and case reserve were counted twice a year, so a misplaced unit could go unfound for up to six months.
A High-Touch Returns Area
The singles area is where returned and single pair product gets stored and picked, and every touch is a chance for a box to end up in the wrong location.
Aisle Congestion
Manual counts tied up lift equipment in very narrow aisles (VNA), and drivers had to wait on each other to clear an aisle before counting could start.
Held-Back Marketplace Inventory
ASICS kept 12 to 15 units out of every 100 off its online marketplace availability feeds because the tail of the inventory carried fulfillment risk. Product at the bottom of that tail never showed up on the marketplace, which left liquidation at a steep discount as the alternative.
The Corvus Solution
ASICS deployed the Corvus One Autonomous Inventory Management System in two storage profiles: the singles area and case reserve. Corvus One is a physical AI system that flies with onboard computer vision and spatial reasoning, with no localization beacons, stickers or markers anywhere in the building, and it feeds every flight into the AIMS platform. The next morning, an inventory associate reviews each flight and resolves most discrepancies from a desk, working off the video and images Corvus One captures of every location.
In both areas the drone does two jobs on the same pass: it reads every UPC, and it counts the boxes in each location. In the singles area, returns mean the same SKU can show up several times in one location, so a UPC read on its own can get attached to the wrong box. Counting the boxes gives ASICS a physical total to check the scans against (if the drone counts 10 boxes, it should come back with 10 UPC reads).
Kyle Koestler, Senior Director of Distribution and Transportation at ASICS America, walks through a single-deep Corvus One count at ASICS, with the drone counting the boxes in each location as it scans every UPC.
Case counting video transcript
Kyle Koestler, Senior Director of Distribution and Transportation, ASICS America Corporation
We have two separate areas that we're asking one drone to count both ways. So, I was really interested to see how you guys were going to solution the singles where you're looking at UPCs. Some big UPCs, some small UPCs, some going picket fence, some going ladder, all different varieties and not sitting in a standardized way in the location. And also be able to count the cases two aisles down.
A lot of what you're seeing is returns that are put back. But it could be also some wholesale account returns. They're not just e-com returns. So, sometimes you may have multiple units of the same SKU. You can't just say, well, I see this barcode, but you may see this barcode five or six times in this one location.
We need to know the count. They have the expected count. It's almost like the double check. You have the expected count of boxes. Like, okay, great. If you see this many boxes, then you should also see this many unique UPCs. Even though some of them may be the same, but they're tied to the box. If there's 10 boxes, you should have 10 UPCs. And so, there's some unique logic with that.
The Impact
6x Cycle Count Frequency
The singles area and case reserve are now counted monthly.
60% Faster Inventory Recovery
ASICS recovers misplaced inventory about 60% faster, which means fewer exceptions, fewer canceled orders and happier customers.
About 200 Labor Hours Redirected Each Month
Counting labor moved into inventory reconciliation for the packing operation, root cause research and special projects for the wholesale side of the business.
26 Misplaced Cases Surfaced in Three Months
The drones found 26 misplaced cases holding more than 200 pairs of shoes, product that would otherwise have stayed unavailable to customers until the next scheduled count.
Full Marketplace Feeds
ASICS now publishes its full availability feed to online marketplaces and sells that product at full price.
Fewer Lift Hours in the Aisles
Taking counts off the floor means less lift equipment running through the aisles. The Byhalia facility is LEED Silver certified and draws about half its power from an on-site solar array, and ASICS counts the Corvus One deployment among the programs supporting its sustainability goals.
If a unit went missing, we might not find it for six months. That could be the last pair in the building for an order we've already taken, and then the customer gets a cancellation. With Corvus One, we're cycle counting on a monthly basis so we can surface any errors sooner and ensure customer orders are delivered on time.
Omnichannel Distribution Runs on an Accurate Shared Inventory
When wholesale, retail and e-commerce all draw from the same inventory, a misplaced box in the busiest part of the building can cancel an order from any of them. At ASICS that's the singles area, where returns get restocked and single pairs get picked, and case reserve. Counting both twice a year meant a misplaced box could stay unavailable to every channel for months. Counting them monthly with Corvus One surfaces those boxes within a month, and puts the product back on sale at full price everywhere ASICS sells, online marketplaces included.
The ASICS deployment shows how autonomous inventory drones can support omnichannel footwear and apparel distribution:
- Count the most-handled storage profiles monthly, returns included, without adding labor
- Check every UPC read against a physical box count
- Fly very narrow aisles with no localization infrastructure
- Let the inventory team resolve most discrepancies from a desk
- Put held-back marketplace inventory back on sale at full price
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