INTERNATIONAL TOY MANUFACTURER

CLIENT:

Growth and the demand for more manufacturing space for the North American production and distribution operations of a multinational toy company led them to decide to construct a new distribution center on their site. The company needed to determine the level of technology, the layout, and the information systems support requirements.

DESCRIPTION OF OPERATION:

The distribution center ran a very conventional, paper-based operation that would not meet future demands.

OBJECTIVES:

Gross & Associates was retained to determine the facility configuration, the appropriate levels of automation and mechanization for each system component, the layout details, and the information system support requirements. We also were asked to validate the operation processes, equipment and overall capacity using simulation modeling.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

Gross & Associates recommended the following processes and associated equipment:

1. An automated pallet stacking and trailer loading system in the production plant
2. A fully automated pallet transfer system using conveyor-equipped trailers to move pallets from manufacturing to the new DC
3. A fully automated pallet conveyor and divert system to unload the transfer trailers and direct pallets to the input station of the system-assigned putaway aisle
4. Ten pallet high (five double stacked sets) storage for 84,000 pallets in a very narrow aisle configuration serviced by turret trucks with RF direction and bar code scan verification of all transactions
5. A four level pick to belt module featuring batch picking using customer specific labels; a five to one merge; a shoe sorter with the capacity for handling 65,000 cases per day on two shifts
6. Mechanically assisted palletizing
7. A separate mechanized forward pick line for labeling large quantity picks (full pallet and multiple pallet quantities) per batch
8. Scanning confirmation of pallet loading onto outbound trailers

RESULTS:

The designed system has allowed the company to maintain a highly efficient single North American DC for over fourteen years. Mechanized and automated design features significantly reduced labor in a high cost market. The design has also enabled the client to make plant production more level, thereby minimizing costs and allowing the DC to handle inventory build for the Christmas season. Having the high capacity system allowed the company to accommodate seasonal customer requirements in a reasonably routine manner vs. the difficulties of satisfying peaks under the old conventional pick to pallet jack system. The system has proved to be flexible enough to adapt to changing customer requirements over a long time span without sacrificing productivity or throughput capacity.