Heavy-duty Growth Demands a Heavy-duty Distribution Operation

Ein privater Hersteller/Versender von Industrieprodukten mit einem Jahresumsatz von über 2 Milliarden Dollar verzeichnet ein Wachstum im zweistelligen Prozentbereich. Das Unternehmen liefert hoch belastbare Werkzeuge und Zubehör für jedermann, von professionellen Handwerksbetrieben und Hobbybastlern bis hin zu Do-it-yourself-Profis. Zu den Kunden zählen auch mehrere große Einzelhändler wie Home Depot, Grainger, MSC Industrial und Ace Hardware.

Um diese Kunden besser bedienen zu können, den Betrieb zu erweitern und ein schnelles Wachstum zu ermöglichen, beauftragte das Unternehmen FORTNA mit der Konsolidierung von vier bestehenden Anlagen in einem neuen, über 600.000 Quadratmeter großen Distributionszentrum.

This company’s business is complex due to variable order profiles – large bulk orders in cases and pallets for Home Depot’s regional distribution centers, smaller orders with multiple lines for industrial distributors like Grainger and MSC Industrial, plus unit picks for smaller retail hardware customers. Its largest customers have extensive requirements for VAS (kitting) and labeling that the company needed to perform.

Additionally, as a brand known for innovation, the company regularly introduced new products, increasing the SKU count with each new product line and with the acquisition of a supplier.

Lack of systems integration was hurting inventory visibility and adding support costs. The limitations of the existing warehouse management software required costly workarounds and added more complexity to the operations. Working out of multiple sites was eroding margin, reducing productivity and causing service failures as the coordination of orders between facilities became more and more challenging. Accuracy suffered. Shortages, substitutions and stock-outs increased – all of which was costing the company in excessive returns and/or charge backs from customers who expected the perfect order every time.

DIE LÖSUNG

FORTNA designed and implemented a single consolidated facility to handle their complex requirements and capacity needs and gave them the flexibility to adapt to future needs and growth projections. The greenfield DC was to be located close to existing facilities to take advantage of the knowledge base of the company’s experienced workforce and show the company’s commitment to its associates’ years of loyal service.

As part of the project, FORTNA helped the company develop a roadmap outlining tipping points, so the company could readily identify when they needed to make additional investments to support further growth. FORTNA also helped slot the new DC to maximize operational flexibility and facilitate faster order processing.

In addition to the design and implementation of the new DC, FORTNA implemented its FORTNAWCS™ warehouse execution system and led a systems selection and integration of WMS software with their existing systems. FORTNA’s training and 24/7/365 support helped ensure a smooth transition to the new facility. The new systems also helped with managing slow-moving vs. core SKUs, split shipments between multiple DCs, e-Commerce orders, and geographic assignment for store replenishment.

DAS ERGEBNIS

The new optimized DC has enabled this industrial products distributor to alleviate capacity problems and enable continued growth. FORTNA continued to work on strategic initiatives that would allow them to double in growth over the next three to four years. Without changes to its distribution operations, that projected growth, along with revenue and margins, would have been stifled. The company has achieved improvements in productivity (30%) and throughput capacity and can process orders faster than ever – from 3 days to less than one day, with 99.82% accuracy. They effectively ship twice the volume, with zero service issues. And they are operationally equipped to flexibly handle a variety of order profiles plus any changes that arise, including additional SKUs from new product lines and acquisitions. Further, they can easily add new customers with their own unique order profiles. Innovation is now fully enabled and supported by a distribution operation, ensuring customer confidence and satisfaction.

Veröffentlicht / aktualisiert 11.01.2021