36 DC VELOCITY APRIL 2014 www.dcvelocity.com
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into running double shifts to complete the testing, a highly
stressful period. “One big lesson we learned is to not make
up time from construction delays in your testing phase,”
she says. Van Rensburg adds that if he had to do it again,
he would have absorbed the costs
for staying in the existing facilities a
while longer.
ROOM FOR EXPANSION
But those problems are behind the
company now. Today, the facility
receives and puts away an average
of 400 pallets a day. It is central
to UTi Pharma’s operations around
the country, as all products bound
either for customers or for other
UTi Pharma DCs pass through the
Meadowview distribution center. It is at Meadowview
where imported goods reside during government-mandat-ed quarantine periods.
The building, which is temperature- and humidity-con-
trolled throughout, is divided into receiving, bulk storage,
unit pick, and shipping areas. The 4,220-square-meter
( 45,424-square-foot) receiving area has a pallet conveyor
that flows into the bulk storage AS/RS. Euro pallets, which
measure 800 by 1,200 by 120 millimeters ( 31 by 47 by 5
inches), can go directly into the system. Non-Euro pallets
must be repalletized first. The 10-aisle AS/RS has 38,400
pallet locations but is designed to be expanded to as many
as 58,000. The unit-picking area adja-
cent to the AS/RS consists of 11
double-layer carousels feeding seven
pick-to-tote stations.
The system uses weight validation
in both the receiving and picking
processes. In the unit-pick area,
workers are offered a single product at a time, further reducing the
opportunity for errors, according to
Fortna. Compared with the previous
operations, manual processes have
been cut in half, with the automated
processes sharply accelerating throughput. In fact, the pick-to-tote technology increased unit-picking productivity by
342 percent.
The planning and execution of the project may have
been arduous, but the results indicate it was a worthwhile
endeavor for UTi Pharma, providing the company with
an efficient, productive, and secure facility with room to
accommodate its continued rapid growth. N
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