Carhartt
Assembly Line
Carhartt turns to data under new CIO
Like many CIOs, Carhartt’s top digital leader is aware that data is the key to making advanced technologies work. Carhartt opted to build its own enterprise data warehouse even as it built a data lake with Microsoft and Databricks to ensure that its handful of data scientists have both engines with which to manipulate structured and unstructured data sets.
At first, during the pandemic, many essential workers needed to be equipped with Carhartt work gear for extra protection. As a result, the company’s revenue stream grew in the double digits, even when certain business segments were curtailed due to widespread work stoppages.
Once work stoppages started taking hold, Carhartt gained a rare glimpse into its supply chain, enabling its data analysts to view the steps of the supply chain in exquisite detail, like the individual frames in a film.
Carhartt partners with robotics firm to automate fulfillment services
Carhartt wants to boost innovation and technology for its consumer-facing operations. But the company is also reimagining how it functions on the back end. The workwear brand recently automated a facility just outside Columbus, Ohio, with the help of Locus Robotics, a Massachusetts-based firm. Third-party logistics company DHL is a client of Locus and does end-to-end fulfillment for Carhartt across its retail, wholesale, and e-commerce businesses.
Locus’s fleet of robots deployed at the facility has automated all of Carhartt’s checking and replenishment functions, and CEO Rick Faulk says Carhartt is seeing significant productivity gains, which is measured in the number of units moved per hour. Carhartt’s SKU count at the Columbus facility expanded greatly and the company also needed faster order shipments. Carhartt was previously running roughly 60–70 units per hour with humans. Now that figure is almost 180 units per hour, about a 3x increase. An added benefit for Carhartt is the company can request more robots if it needs to fulfill more orders on a short turnaround.