materialhandlingupdate
BY DAVID MALONEY, SENIOR EDITOR
go fetch
A year ago, Del Monte
Foods had to send out
a lift truck and driver
WHEN DEL MONTE FOODS WENT TO BUILD A NEW PET FOOD DC
a few years back, it could have stuck with the tried and true. With a number of distribution centers already operating around the country, the company was an experienced player in the distribution game. Rather than start
from scratch, it could have duplicated the processes used in the other facilities at the new site.
But Del Monte chose not to do that. It had begun to suspect there was a
better way of doing things—an approach that was more efficient and less
costly.
“The thought of building a new site and doing it the traditional way was
not very appealing,” says Keith Arntson, vice president of DC operations for Del Monte
Foods. “We wanted instead to find a way to take the non-value-added costs out of the
equation.”
Soon after it got operations up and running at the new facility, which opened in 2008,
Del Monte turned its attention to ways to eliminate those costs. It quickly zeroed in on
the labor-intensive material handling system, which required workers on lift trucks to
carry out routine pallet storage and retrieval tasks. It seemed pretty clear to all concerned
that the facility would benefit from automating that part of the operation, which would
free up workers for more challenging tasks. The only question was how.
whenever it needed
something retrieved at
its pet food DC. Now,
all it takes is a vehicle.
The pick of the litter
While Del Monte Foods is primarily known for its canned fruits and vegetables, it’s actually one of the top dogs in the pet food market. Collectively, its pet food and pet snack
lines—which include such well-known brands as Kibbles ’n Bits, Meow Mix, Milk-Bone,
9Lives, and Snausages—accounted for 45 percent of the company’s sales last year.
Dry pet food and pet snacks are produced at a plant in Topeka, Kan. Up until 2008, the
plant shipped all of its finished products off site to warehouses across the country for
regional distribution. But that wasn’t always an efficient system. For one thing, it meant
that orders for customers in the Midwest had to be shipped back to the heartland, which
resulted in additional handling and transportation costs.
The opening of the new 420,000-square-foot DC, which is located adjacent to the
Topeka plant, changed all that. Now, finished goods can be moved directly to the DC as
soon as they roll off the line. From there, products destined for other parts of the country are shipped out to other Del Monte DCs for local distribution. Orders for Midwestern
