For furniture retailer American Signature, the secret to doubling DC output was the humble—or in this case, not-so-humble—cart.

There's no way around it. Moving a big couch or dining room table or armoire into, through, and out of a distribution center is necessarily a cumbersome process.

And when you multiply that task by, say, a million items per month, it starts to sound like a monumental material handling challenge. But for retailer American Signature Inc., moving all that furniture is no problem. In fact, it's all part of the daily routine.

It hasn't always been that way. A few years back, the company was struggling to find a way to move large furniture items that wasn't awkward, slow, unsafe, or damage prone. In 2008, it finally hit upon a solution. Today, the retailer is able to whisk even the biggest and bulkiest items through its Ohio and Pennsylvania facilities at double the rates it achieved in the past.