BACKGROUND
A major supermarket chain operating full service grocery stores in the southeastern United States had been outsourcing their health and beauty distribution. Due to a recent change in management philosophy, it was determined that this portion of their supply chain would now come “in house” and they cancelled the outsourcing agreement.

The Beacon Group was engaged to examine the Health & Beauty portion of the distribution operation in the fall of 2004…

CHALLENGE
Our client had up to 2,000,000 square feet of “traditional” grocery warehouse space, but needed help choosing which of their six (6) distribution centers made the most sense to support this new portion of their business. The Beacon Group was tasked with reviewing all six facilities and understanding the transportation challenges, within our client's supply chain, with those facilities. We were also charged with procuring the fully automated material handling system. Not only was this a very detailed and complex project but we were dealing with a very aggressive time frame to ensure the client could begin shipping orders from this facility on their planned schedule (they had given notice of cancellation to the outsourcing firm). Along with that, all of this needed to happen while distribution operations continued on a daily business.

SOLUTION
After several months of concepts, layouts, and designs, The Beacon Group, in concert with the client's project team, finalized a plan for the HBC distribution operation that would exceed all of their goals and expectations. The system included the integration of (2) 3-level carton flow pick modules, a tote handling and sortation conveyor, palletizing lanes, pallet handling conveyor and pallet unloading station, automatic stretch wrapper, automatic pallet label application, trash conveyor and baler system, lighting, electrical, fire suppression and the interfacing of the existing WMS and new conveyor control system. The compilation of these technologies was a multi-million dollar highly automated, high speed material handling system that met the current and future growth demands of this new business segment.

RESULTS
The system was commissioned on schedule in July 2005. Our client is servicing their (200+) stores while achieving approximately 18% reduced operating costs. They have realized these savings in a number of ways. The Beacon Group would be excited to demonstrate exactly how they reached that number!

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