Case Study:
MANN LAKE
Overview
Founded in 1983 in Hackensack, MN, Mann Lake is the leader in quality
manufacturing, innovation, and customer service in the beekeeping industry. It
serves both commercial businesses and small-scale hobbyists with the goal of
keeping bees flourishing. Mann Lake has also expanded to offer supplies and
products for poultry and goat farming. The company currently has seven locations
in Minnesota, California, Pennsylvania, Texas, Florida, Kentucky and Oregon.
Benefits and Key Outcomes
Reduced order processing times by 50%
Removed the need to hire 10-12 additional employees to keep up with order demand
Challenge
After making the switch to NetSuite in 2020, Mann Lake knew that to continue to grow the business, it needed to find a shipping
solution to work hand-in-hand with its new ERP. The company has approximately 12,000 SKUs, ranging from one-pound boxes to
60-pound boxes with varying dimensions. In addition, certain shipments qualify as HAZMAT and require special handling,
instructions and labeling. Mann Lake’s previous shipping software wasn’t able to automate processes nor integrate with NetSuite
and all of its carriers. “With our old process, one person would pick, another person would pack and push the boxes down the line
where a third person would process them all – and that’s where we had a bottleneck,” said Shana Rowlette, CFO at Mann Lake.
Before implementing ShipHawk, Mann Lake manually rate shopped between UPS, USPS and FedEx. That involved a team
member looking up shipping rates on each carrier’s portal with three separate steps to pull in an order. It was time consuming to
compare different rates, service levels, and to identify backup carriers if one was experiencing delays. This manual process also
increased the likelihood of errors.
Mann Lake needed to reduce the number of manual decisions that employees had to make to select the best packing options
for each order. Training a new employee was time consuming and the process was difficult to learn. It often led to mistakes that
resulted in increased shipping costs, for example, an employee would select a more expensive carrier or service level than
needed to meet a customer delivery expectation. Learning the steps to select the best packing choice, considering dimensional
requirements, weight breaks, and shipping volume contracts took a lot of time.
Solution
Since making the switch to ShipHawk, Mann Lake has been able to streamline the fulfillment process and reduced order
processing times by 50% – saving a minute and a half of time needed to process each order. “Not only has ShipHawk improved
the speed at which we process packages, but it has also consolidated order processing in fewer steps by fewer workers,” said
Rowlette. Each packer is now processing their own orders instead of six different team members – one at each location or
station – moving the same order down the line.
Had we not made the switch to ShipHawk, we would have had to hire an additional 10-12 people just to keep up with our order volume.
ShipHawk’s packing algorithm calculates final packed weights and dimensions for each shipment and delivers packing and
shipping rate intelligence in real time. Every order is packed in the optimal carton, automatically considering weight, dimensions,
value, fragility, or special handling requirements, including hazardous materials. “The Smart Packing™ solution tells us how to
optimally pack everything, so our employees aren’t spending unnecessary time trying to figure out the best box or cheapest
carrier,” said Rowlette.
Mann Lake has implemented ShipHawk’s shipping solution in all seven distribution centers. “It was a smooth transition. Our team
really likes ShipHawk,” said Rowlette.