Asics drones recover misplaced stock 60% faster at Mississippi DC

Market Context & Direct Impact

Asics has moved from twice-yearly counts to monthly drone counts at one U.S. site. The footwear and apparel brand flies Corvus One drones through its Byhalia, Mississippi, distribution center, an 855,000-square-foot omnichannel facility holding nearly 3 million units. Manual counts there had run only twice a year. The drones now fly seven night sorties from about 7 p.m. local time, reading barcodes and tallying cases in the singles and case-reserve zones, where most discrepancies appear.

The company says misplaced-stock recovery is now 60% faster, a figure from its 10 November release. Supply Chain Dive relays that figure and reports that the drones found 26 misplaced cases holding more than 200 pairs of shoes over three months. FreightWaves reports that counting frequency rose six-fold and that roughly 200 hours of monthly counting labor were freed. Human review has not disappeared: an associate still checks each night's footage every morning. Before the change, the team held back 12 to 15 units in every 100 from online listings, according to FreightWaves; Supply Chain Dive puts the cap at up to 15. These are one site's results from a company announcement, so they read as a pilot signal, not a network average.

Core Executive Takeaways

• Monthly beats semi-annualAsics says monthly cycle counts surface errors sooner so customer orders still ship on time.
• Labor moves, not vanishesAbout 200 hours of monthly counting labor went into reconciliation and root-cause work, per FreightWaves.
• Accuracy supports availabilityFreightWaves links the accuracy gain to a revenue benefit from publishing the full availability feed.

Strategic Playbook

1. 1
   Pilot the riskiest zones

   Start monthly counts in returns and single-unit zones, where discrepancies cluster, before rolling any scanning method across the whole network.

2. 2
   Baseline before buying

   Record your held-back share, recovery time and counting hours for one quarter, then measure any vendor against Asics' 60% and 200-hour results, which come from a single site.

Filed 15:26 GMT, 12 November 2026, for the second edition of 12 Nov.
As agents only.

Sources

1. ASICS warehouse drones quickly find misplaced inventoryFreightWaves, published 11 November 2026
2. Asics boosts inventory management using warehouse dronesSupply Chain Dive, published 11 November 2026

Claims ledger: 15 facts and where each comes from

• Asics has deployed autonomous warehouse drones at its omnichannel distribution center in Byhalia, Mississippi, according to a Nov. 10 press release.²
• The Byhalia facility is 855,000 square feet and stores nearly 3 million units across roughly 44,000 SKUs.²
• Before implementing the Corvus One drones at its Byhalia site, Asics performed manual counts within the site twice a year.²
• The drones have helped Asics recover misplaced inventory 60% faster than it did before implementation.²
• In one three-month period, the drones identified 26 misplaced cases containing more than 200 pairs of shoes.²
• The company previously held back up to 15 of every 100 products due to fulfillment risk at the tail of the inventory chain.²
• With Corvus One, Asics is cycle counting on a monthly basis so it can surface errors sooner and ensure customer orders are delivered on time.²
• Asics schedules seven drone flights a night, starting around 7 p.m.¹
• The drones provide surveillance in the areas that tend to produce the most discrepancies: the singles area and case reserve.¹
• The drones increased counting frequency six-fold compared to the normal practice of counting inventory twice a year.¹
• The new system saved about 200 hours of monthly counting labor, which ASICS redirected into inventory research and exception management.¹
• Each morning an inventory associate reviews each flight and resolves most discrepancies from a desk.¹
• Before drone inventory management the team held back 12 to 15 units out of every 100 to make sure it could deliver on what it promised.¹
• ASICS now publishes the full availability feed to online marketplaces and sells product that was previously held back at full price.¹
• The accuracy provides a revenue benefit too.¹

Every figure above is tied to a cited source that was checked on the day of filing. Found an error? Tell the desk.