THE KNOWLTON DEVELOPMENT CORP., BETTER
known as KDC, recently added a new finished-goods
warehouse to its production plant in New Albany, Ohio.
Business was booming for the company, which manufactures health and beauty products for Bath & Body Works
and Victoria’s Secret Stores, and the order fulfillment end
of the operation was feeling the strain. It was clear the company needed additional capacity to ease the pressure as well
as accommodate further growth.
Prior to that, the company had operated
out of a 90,000-square-foot facility that
housed both finished goods and components for manufacturing. But over time, it
became apparent that the facility was not
up to the demands of a fast-flow operation,
where finished goods are held onsite just
three to five days before being shipped out
(and therefore, must be easy to store and
retrieve).
“The configuration of the racking was
very random,” recalls Todd Lowe, KDC’s
senior director of operations. “Part of the
warehouse was outfitted with drive-in
racks for bottles. Another area had racks
where one level was double deep, and others had pushback racking.” The operation,
which required the use of high-reach trucks
for putaway and picking, was also inefficient, he adds. The
double-deep racks meant multiple touches were sometimes
required to locate the correct pallet for shipping. On top of
that, highly skilled lift truck operators were needed to make
it work. “We were dealing with racks that were 26 feet in
height and required a lot of skill to safely pick and put away
pallets in a timely fashion,” Lowe says.
There were other drawbacks as well. For instance, a lot of
labor was required. It often took three shifts and weekend
work to keep up with demand. Plus, repair costs on the
overused equipment were running high.
So when KDC went to build a 60,000-square-foot addi-
tion (of which 30,000 square feet would be dedicated to a
new warehouse), it took great pains to avoid repeating the
mistakes of the past. “Understanding our struggles with
shipping and receiving in the old warehouse, we knew we
had to make changes going forward,” Lowe says.
KDC contacted Raymond Storage Concepts, a material
handling solutions integrator and dealer of Raymond lift
trucks in the Midwest, for help. The company, which is
a long-time user of Raymond equipment,
felt there was a better solution for the new
warehouse space—and there was.
For starters, the new section contains
narrow-aisle racking—with six-foot widths
instead of the nine-foot widths found in
the old warehouse. The racks are SK2000
single-deep selective pallet racks from Steel
King, which offer 3,500 product storage
locations.
KDC also bought four Raymond swing
reach trucks to perform putaway and picking tasks. Wires embedded in the floor
guide the trucks as they move through the
narrow aisles. The swing reach trucks can
quickly access positions on both sides of
the aisle and are equipped with scanners
for inventory reconciliation, mounted laptops, and radio communication devices.
“The net result was way better than we had even hoped,”
Lowe says. For instance, associates can now pick finished-goods pallets and load them on a truck in a fraction
of the time it once took. “What used to take 90 minutes
now only takes 30 minutes,” Lowe reports. “This is a 60
minute savings.”
The tripling of the warehouse’s operational efficiency
has saved labor, requiring shipping on just two shifts now
instead of three. And the benefits don’t stop there. “Repairs
on the lift trucks have dropped to almost nothing,” Lowe
says. “Plus morale is up, and we had a very successful peak
season with minimal overtime.”
A warehouse addition outfitted with new racks and swing reach trucks makes product storage
and retrieval easy for a beauty products supplier.
Beautiful results
