At a Glance
| Detail | Value |
|---|---|
| Industry | Retail / Distribution — Fortune 100 |
| Facility | 2.1 million sq ft, mezzanine level, ~200 processing stations |
| Key Result | Full-facility Andon deployment covering receiving, processing, facilities, and quality |
| Scale | 100+ call buttons, 20+ watch pagers, 80+ wireless lights |
| Expansion | Sister-plant deployments in progress at additional distribution centers |
The Challenge
This Fortune 100 retailer operates a massive distribution center — 2.1 million total square feet with a 1.7 million square foot footprint plus a mezzanine level. The facility handles approximately 200 processing stations and 50 receiving docks, with workers spread across an area where finding help meant walking for minutes or shouting across aisles.
The core problem: operators at processing stations needed to call for supervisors, facilities support, quality checks, and bus drivers — but the only communication method was walking to find someone or using radios that were unreliable across the facility's vast footprint.
Specific challenges included:
- No call tracking. When a worker needed help, they physically searched for a supervisor. There was no record of the request, wait time, or response.
- Massive facility size. At 2.1 million square feet, signal coverage was a critical engineering challenge. Workers on the mezzanine needed to reach responders on the ground floor and vice versa.
- Multiple departments needing coordination. Processing, receiving, facilities maintenance, quality, and transportation all required different responders for different issues.
- No escalation path. If a supervisor was unavailable, there was no automatic notification to a backup. Workers simply waited.
"We don't have great Wi-Fi in the building, and it takes an act of Congress to get on the company Wi-Fi."The IT environment added complexity: corporate Wi-Fi restrictions meant any solution needed to operate independently of the company network for its core alerting function.
Why They Chose an Andon System
The distribution center evaluated multiple approaches:
- Radio systems — already in use but ineffective across the facility's size; calls went unanswered with no logging
- Wi-Fi-dependent solutions — ruled out due to corporate network restrictions
- Basic paging — insufficient for multi-department routing and escalation
- Radio frequency operation — no dependence on Wi-Fi for core button-to-pager alerting
- Multi-department routing — different buttons for different teams (facilities, quality, supervisors, drivers)
- Coverage at scale — signal repeaters to blanket 2.1M sq ft including the mezzanine
- Data capture — response time tracking, call logging, and escalation reporting
- IT-friendly deployment — standalone PC installation with optional subnet for SMS/email escalation
The Implementation
Phase 1: Initial Deployment
The first phase covered the core processing floor:
- 50 3-key call buttons at processing stations
- Watch pagers for supervisors, facilities, and quality teams
- 50 wireless stack lights for visual department-coded alerts
- Signal repeaters (including transmitter-side repeaters) to cover the full facility
- Multi-chargers for watch pager fleet management
- Advanced software on a standalone PC with button board display on Smart TVs
- Division setup for each department: Facilities, Quality, Supervisors, Transportation
- Color-coded lights — different colors per department so workers could visually identify which type of call was active at a station
- Escalation sequences — unanswered calls to a supervisor automatically escalated to a backup, then to the department manager
- Firewall coordination with IT for the standalone software PC (isolated subnet approach)
Phase 2: Expansion
Based on the success of Phase 1, the facility expanded with:
- Additional 50 call buttons and 50 wireless lights covering receiving docks and the mezzanine
- Additional signal repeaters for full building coverage
- Supplementary wireless lights for areas not covered in the initial deployment
Phase 3: Sister Plants
The success at this facility triggered interest from other distribution centers within the same corporate network:
- A sister facility in another state reached out directly, citing the original deployment: "Our building in El Paso is using one of your products."
- A third distribution center with 70 receiving doors across three wings (528 ft, 528 ft, 430 ft) began evaluation for a similar deployment
"Right now we use radios to communicate across the different areas."
The Results
Operational Visibility
For the first time, the distribution center had data on:
- How many calls each department handled per shift
- Average response time by department and time of day
- Which stations generated the most requests
- Escalation frequency — how often calls went unanswered by the first responder
Multi-Department Coordination
The system replaced a fragmented communication process with structured workflows:
- Facilities calls routed to the facilities team's watch pagers with visual confirmation via stack lights
- Quality calls sent to quality inspectors with automatic escalation to the quality manager
- Supervisor calls went to floor supervisors with backup escalation
- Transportation calls for bus driver coordination at receiving docks
Scale Achievement
- 200+ processing stations connected to a single system
- Full building coverage achieved across 2.1M sq ft including the mezzanine
- No Wi-Fi dependency — core alerting operates on radio frequency, independent of corporate network infrastructure
- Sister-plant momentum — the deployment created organic demand from other facilities in the same corporate network
Return on Investment
The total investment across both phases represented a significant capital expenditure, but the operational visibility alone justified the spend. Before the Andon system, no one could quantify how much time workers spent waiting for support. After deployment, the data showed patterns that informed staffing decisions, shift scheduling, and process flow optimization.
What They Said
The engineering team at this facility emphasized two things: the system's independence from corporate IT infrastructure (critical for facilities where Wi-Fi is restricted or unreliable), and the sister-plant effect — once one building demonstrated results, other facilities in the network requested the same solution without requiring a separate sales cycle.
The operational data captured during the first 90 days became part of their quarterly business reviews, providing metrics that had never existed before the Andon deployment.
Related resources:
- Andon System Costs and Pricing Models
- Wired vs Wireless Andon Systems
- How to Choose an Andon System
- Browse All Case Studies
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