BY DAVID MALONEY, SENIOR EDITOR
AUTOMATED SYSTEMS
materialhandlingupdate
building up,
not out
Capacity problems were
creating holdups for cookware
distributor Meyer Corp.
But with a new high-bay addition,
things are cooking again.
A FEW YEARS BACK, COOKWARE DISTRIBUTOR
Meyer Corp. faced the classic growth challenge—at
least where its distribution operations were concerned. Although it has only been doing business in
the United States since the early ’80s, the company,
a subsidiary of global cookware giant Meyer
Manufacturing, has enjoyed tremendous success in
that time. Today, it has grown into one of the
largest cookware distributors in the country, marketing such well-known brands as Circulon,
Anolon, Farberware, KitchenAid, SilverStone,
Rachael Ray, and Paula Deen.
That kind of growth is great for the bottom line,
but it can create problems elsewhere in the organization. In this case, it was the company’s DC in
Fairfield, Calif., that was feeling the strain. Growing
volume had created serious capacity problems at
the 365,000-square-foot facility, forcing the supplier to store product in five nearby off-site facilities.
That stopgap measure was creating as many problems as it solved, such as the need for double handling and inventory-tracking complications.
Moving was not an option. The company wanted
to remain in its current building, which is located on
its main distribution campus in Fairfield. Problem
was, there was little room to expand its footprint.
Then the company hit upon a solution: If it couldn’t
expand outward, it would expand upward.
High rise
The distributor’s solution was to build a high-bay
addition that houses a new, high-capacity automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS). The 12-aisle
high-bay system, which was designed and built by
Daifuku, now stores approximately 66,000 pallets of
cookware in a footprint of only 165,000 square feet.
