Subaru of New England is the independent distributor for Subaru cars and spare parts, for the 6 New England states. The company was founded in 1971 by Ernie Bock Sr. Today is led by his son Ernie Boch Jr., as CEO. In 2014, Subaru of New England built a new 15,300 m² facility in Norwood, Massachusetts, which is the head office, as well as being a training and distribution center. The building is certified LEED Platinum, from the U.S. The Green Building Council includes an 8800 m² warehouse that is 42% larger than that of the previous office, thus allowing storage and distribution growth.

Subaru from New England supplies 64 Subaru dealers throughout New England. Reseller Orders must be dealt with in order to meet customer and service needs.

Parts orders are sent to the New England Subaru which must handle them quickly and accurately, to be delivered to dealers by the following morning. In the past the spare parts were stored and taken from a horizontal carousel system, which took up a lot of space, was inefficient and caused ergonomic difficulties when the operators were picking the material. It was also necessary to increase the accuracy of the picking because the operators had to search inside the carousel in order to identify the required material.

For these reasons, Subaru of New England chose Modula vertical warehouse for storage and picking, to be installed in their new building under construction.

Efficient picking with Modula automated warehouses

Modula was chosen to help New England's Subaru achieve the goals and improvements needed for their storage and picking system. 9 Vertical Warehouses have been installed which contain a large variety of spare parts.

The system is designed to provide Subaru with 11,000 picking pitches divided into 9 Vertical Warehouses. In total, the system provides 290 m³ and 996 m² of warehouse occupying only a surface of 89 m².

The VLM system works on 3 bays for each of the 3 vertical stores and includes the Put to light picking system, allowing 60 orders to be processed simultaneously.

Currently, New England's Subaru handles 1600 order lines a day, but the Modula system allows you to manage many more. The Modula Vertical Warehouse has allowed us to achieve the efficiency and precision required in picking and replenishment of materials, to allow orders to be processed by the end of the day and delivered to the customer the following day.