s
p
ec
i
a
lr
ep
o
rt
RELIABLE BALERS SINCE 1945
www.americanbaler.com
800-843-7512 • sales@americanbaler.com • Bellevue, Ohio
Value
zation standpoint,” Beimfohr says.
“We had run out of capacity. The
Global Solutions Center was a design
that allowed us to collapse multiple
operations into one facility.”
Today, the company pro-
vides a number of services at
the 228,000-square-foot Global
Solutions Center (GSC), including
hardware integration, software con-
figuration, systems maintenance,
assembly, packaging, and logistics.
The facility can build and ship up to
700,000 systems a year.
Avnet’s goal in building the GSC
was not only to consolidate existing
operations, but also to handle growth
in demand for its highly complex inte-
gration services and provide space for
building what are sometimes enormous
systems. Efficiency and a commitment to
continuous improvement also drove the
plan. “We wanted to Lean out as much as
possible,” Beimfohr says. “We had started
our Lean journey several years before out
of sheer necessity because we ran out of
capacity.”
LEAN PRACTICES AT THE CORE
Today, both the plant and the warehouse
maintain a strong focus on continuous
improvement, which is a key principle
of Lean operations. “Our goal is to have
employees wake up every day seeking
ways to improve the process,” Beimfohr
says. “And then we have a management
team that shamelessly rewards our folks
when they come up with new ideas.”
While the Lean practices were origi-
nally adopted as a way to meet capacity
challenges, they are now embedded in the
Avnet culture, Beimfohr says. All employ-
ees—the operation has about 320 people
on staff, on average—are expected to
offer suggestions for improvement as part
of their job and are evaluated on their
contributions during annual reviews.
The very design of the warehouse also
reflects that relentless focus on efficiency. It is configured for the direct flow of
production materials to the shop floor.
“We built the rack configuration to complement the flow of product through the
integration center,” Beimfohr explains.
“It is a direct flow of material from pick
through the production process. That has
been a huge improvement for us. That
was Lean Initiative One. Lean Initiative
Two was to build our shipping and our
receiving areas identically. That way,
during peak periods, we are able to extend
the receiving area into the shipping area
early in the morning and vice versa late
in the day.”
To make the best possible use of space,
the warehouse was designed with very
narrow aisles, Beimfohr says. For its lift
trucks, the company chose Hyster very-narrow-aisle man-up order pickers that
are controlled by a wire-guided system
while in the aisles. Workers operate the
