& Parts Distribution
One Building. Two Warehouses.
3 to 4 Times the Speed.
A major U.S. airline centralized parts distribution on Infios, tuned for aviation and rolled out across three automation systems.
Watch the interview with Paul Hill
Aviation Inventory Isn't Ordinary Inventory
The airline ran on an ERP that paid the bills and kept finance happy, but was never built to run a warehouse. Moving parts distribution into one central hub meant it finally needed a real WMS. The catch: aviation inventory does not behave like normal inventory.
"It is not just box in, box out. We overhaul the part and bring it back into inventory multiple times, which means tracking serial numbers, and that is complex. We needed a system that could handle all of those attributes and warn us on the receiving end."
– Paul Hill, Distribution Operations LeaderThose attributes fall into four categories a standard warehouse rarely touches. The WMS had to recognize each one and act on it:
Serial tracking through overhaul
Parts do not just go box in, box out. A part gets pulled, overhauled, and returned to inventory again and again, and every cycle has to stay tied to its serial number.
Hazardous material
Hazmat has to be flagged, handled, and stored to regulation, with the system guiding the clerk at receiving instead of relying on memory.
Shelf-life material
Some parts expire. The system has to know when to pull them off the shelf and warn the team before an aged part ever gets used.
Static-sensitive (ESD) material
Electrostatic discharge parts need special handling and storage, right down to which cabinet they belong in.
At receiving, the system reads those attributes and tells each clerk what to do: this part to a clean cabinet, this one to cold storage, this one off the shelf next month. Close to fail-safe, instead of running on memory. Handling all of it in one platform is exactly why configurability sat at the top of the airline's checklist.
Why Infios Rose to the Top
The airline evaluated a lot of WMS vendors and landed on Infios. The deciding factor was configurability: Infios could be shaped around aviation instead of forcing the airline to change how it works.
Designed on Paper, Proven on the Floor
Plenty of planning went in up front, but rollout always surfaces what no plan caught. E2 made fixes in an agile fashion as issues came up, and the two teams learned to speak one language: business on one side, IT on the other, meeting in the middle.
"E2 was a pleasure to work with and very patient. They are good listeners, and that was the key."
– Paul Hill, Distribution Operations LeaderRolled Out Three Ways, Tested Every Step
The airline did not flip a switch. It wrote business requirements and user acceptance test scripts, then proved the system three ways: the initial go-live, each new material type, and each piece of warehouse automation as it came online.
ASRS (Automated Storage & Retrieval)
Went in first. The team shook out the kinks, and there are always kinks, before anything else was layered on top.
Autonomous Workstations
Folded into the same Infios workflow and validated against their own acceptance scripts before go-live.
AMRs (Autonomous Mobile Robots)
The fetch robots came online last, each rollout proven out before the team moved forward.
Requirements First, Then Scripts
Every material type and every automation got its own requirements and acceptance scripts. Nothing went live on assumption.
One Building, a Built-In Control Group
The airline had a rare way to measure success: a manual warehouse and an automated warehouse with similar SKU counts under one roof, side by side.
"We could transact in and out of Infios at three to one, maybe four to one speed. And because you are scanning everything, you catch the empty bin and adjust on the fly. Our accuracy went up into the 90s. It had been way lower, because that ERP was never designed to manage a warehouse."
– Paul Hill, Distribution Operations LeaderShipping made the same jump. Instead of keying every FedEx package by hand, the system used data it already had, so labels come back in seconds instead of 10 to 15 minutes, with the typos and re-keying gone.
About the Project
Why It Worked
Paul kept coming back to how the two teams worked together. When the build wrapped, the airline came down to celebrate with the E2 team. "There are a lot of good, hardworking, intelligent people who figure out a way to get it done. That is what we experienced."
E2's engineers know Infios inside out, so the airline's unusual requirements were familiar ground, not foreign territory.
When rollout surfaced something no one planned for, fixes got made in an agile fashion instead of stalling the project.
Good listeners who translated between the business floor and the IT build until both sides were describing the same system.
What Our Consultants Took Away
The E2 engineers who designed and rolled out the system had their own view from the floor.
Implementing the industry-leading WMS of Infios at a major airline was challenging yet rewarding. It took grit to integrate two automation solutions with complex airline business requirements. We increased the customer's efficiency in putaway and picking by integrating Crown, an automated forklift solution, into Infios' WA suite. It was a good feeling knowing that our hard work kept planes in the air and less time on the ground.
I thoroughly enjoyed integrating the intricate standards of the airline industry into Infios' AutoWave Application. This enabled the airline to efficiently meet demand across their network, from addressing Aircraft on Ground (AOG) situations to executing maintenance tasks planned a month in advance.
One of the most fulfilling parts of this project was being on-site during rollout, working directly with the operation to fine-tune the timing and efficiency between Infios WMS and the automated systems. Real-world testing gave us the insight needed to adjust processes in a way that made sense on the floor, not just on paper. It was also a great opportunity to dive into airline industry standards and apply them within the WMS framework. Bridging those two worlds, automation and aviation, was both challenging and rewarding.
Complex Parts. High Stakes. The Right WMS Partner.
If you are moving to a central distribution model or standing up Infios around serial tracking, hazmat, shelf life, or automation on the floor, you do not have to figure it out alone. We have helped operations like this one select the platform, design it for their reality, and roll it out one proven step at a time.
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