The key to good facility design is balancing the frequently incompatible requirements of throughput and capacity. Increasing dock space, for example, will allow for more goods to flow through the facility, but it does so at a cost of storage space, which adversely impacts capacity. You must strike a compromise between these factors to optimize design in many areas of the operation, including dock space, building clear height, aisle width, number of cross-aisles, rack opening sizes, storage depth, and processing space. Productivity generally benefits if the majority of activity can take place at the floor level, while the use of a building’s height will generally increase the storage capacity. How do you find that balance? Some areas to consider are: Building Clear Height, Aisle Width, Cross-Aisles, Rack Openings, and Depth of Storage.

The article details the trade-offs required in these areas, as well as some practical solutions to meeting your throughput and capacity needs.  Read the full article by clicking on this link (caution: PDF) or access DCM’s featured articles at this link.

“Keep in mind that you’re making a 10 or 15 year decision,” says Sisko. “Let’s say you move into a 100,000 square foot building with an annual lease of $14 per square foot. Your site selection decision just translated into a 14 million dollar decision over that 10 year period. That’s huge,” adds Sisko. “You have to make sure you’ve picked the right site.”

Click here to read the full article. You can read the first part of the article here. For more information on how Gross & Associates can help you select a distribution location and site, click here to obtain free PDFs via email.

This article features interviews with two Gross & Associates staff members who specialize in network modeling, Jack Kuchta and Bill Elenbark, along with two clients who worked with them on an engineering effort to optimize their own networks.

The most common driver for distribution center (DC) network re-engineering, says Kuchta, has been the realization that freight costs have a significant dollar impact on the bottom line. “With today’s rising energy costs, reducing transportation costs across the network has certainly become more pervasive and cannot be ignored,” he says. A network study may simply stem from operational growth resulting in a need for an additional warehouse in a different geographic area.

“Opening more stores in the West Coast, for example, may trigger a need to add a West Coast distribution center (DC),” adds Elenbark. Other reasons for studying your network may include mergers or acquisitions resulting in overlapping or excess warehouse space, new company policies and buying incentives forcing a shift in freight modes, or a need to reduce warehouse costs by investigating other areas with more affordable labor pools.

John Goione, who oversees the distribution of service parts and accessories to BMW’s retail group of car dealers and showrooms, found that transportation costs were just part of his bigger concern. “In 1999, we had two distribution centers, one in the East Coast and another in the West Coast,” recalls Goione. “But continued growth volumes, a hypercompetitive premium luxury automotive market, and rising transportation costs all compelled us to revisit our network.”

Click here to read the entire article. Click here to learn more about distribution network modeling.

Most logistics managers seem to be satisfied with just “getting by” with what they have or profess not having the deep pockets that they associate with high-tech innovations. However, software has become cheaper and more standardized. Hardware has become more generic and maintenance-free. DC technological upgrades have not only become more powerful, but also more affordable. With increased customer demand and cost control efforts coming down from the C-suite, just “getting by” no longer makes sense.

Read the entire article here.

“Eighty percent of respondents are currently dealing with some form of value-added services (VAS) in their DCs,” observes Don Derewecki, president of Gross & Associates (G&A), a logistics consulting firm based in Woodbridge, N.J., and Logistics Management’s partner for the survey. VAS is a collection of specific requirements mandated by customers, involving additional processing of a product or an order, above and beyond the simple picking of the product for an order. The survey shows VAS is rapidly becoming the norm rather than exception. Case in point: Wal-Mart is requiring RFID tags on supplier pallets; Home Depot and Lowe’s are calling for special labels on their products; other mass merchandisers and groceries are demanding display-ready promotional packs. With the rise of VAS, small manufacturing cells are inevitably making their way into the layout of what were once pure storage and distribution operations. “To cope,” adds Derewecki, “warehouse managers have been forced to adopt ‘production tools’ specifically in areas of workstation design and labor planning/balancing.”

Click on this link to read the entire article.

The following is an excerpt from the article:

“Over the past 10 years, my colleague, Bill Elenbark, and I have worked together on a number of greenfield projects with a wide variety of clients for Gross & Associates, a consulting firm based in Woodbridge, NJ. Together, we’ve christened many brand-new facilities, sited them in better locations with improved layouts, more efficient equipment and a whole lot more of space. We both agree that the key to success is planning and scheduling details - beware of the manager who can’t be bothered by them.

Now a senior engineering consultant for the company, Elenbark’s expertise lies in distribution network modeling and determining the location of a new warehouse, while I’ve been mostly involved with new facility design and implementation. In this article, which includes insight from two of our top greenfield clients, I’ll relate all of the process steps Bill and I go through when locating, designing, planning, and implementing a new DC. In turn, logistics professionals can get a better feel for what needs to be accomplished if a greenfield project is in the plans.”

To read the rest of the article in Logistics Management, please follow this link:

How to Go Greenfield

To read the article, please click on the following link:

Designing the Perfect Warehouse.

Congratulations to all the recipients ! Please click the following link to read the full article in DC Velocity:

The Rainmakers