For years, your materials handling system has served you well. Throughput has been high, maintenance low. But now something is different. Neither the hardware nor the software meet your needs quite as precisely. Often, this is the time to consider a retrofit or upgrade.

"You used to be at point A. Now you're at point B," is how Jim Tompkins, founder of consultants Tompkins Associates (919-876-3667), puts it.

The great challenge is to determine what is needed going forward. "Don't retrofit for B," says Tompkins. "Retrofit for point C. Wayne Gretzky and Larry Bird were so good at their sports because they always went where the puck or ball was going to be. They anticipated the future."

Ultimately, the goal is improved utilization of the same facility—getting more from the same space. As managers who have gone through the process will say, that requires considerable homework. For a successful retrofit or upgrade, they say, you must determine what your current performance levels are and what they need to be. It's also critical to understand how business requirements have changed since the original system was installed, and, as Tompkins says, what the future will bring.

All of that should be done before talking to a supplier, says Patrick Sedlak of Sedlak Management Consultants, (330-908-2100). "You don't want to get so far down the path that you are dictating to the supplier exactly what the solution has to be in terms of how it will work," he says. "You want to set the criteria for the retrofit but not dictate how the criteria will be met."

Then with the proper design, economic justification and implementation, a retrofit or upgrade project can allow your operation to meet changing business requirements for the foreseeable future. Six examples of successful retrofits and upgrades follow on the next three pages.

There were multiple troubles at International Paper's beverage packaging operation in Turlock, Calif. Gantry palletizers couldn't keep pace. Merge lines would backup. Conveyor jams were common. And a reflective tape system that directed sortation was inadequate to deal with increasing volumes.

"We were just not achieving the kinds of reliability levels needed to meet our shipping goals," says Ron Young, maintenance team leader.

The solution was to go to advanced computer controls, upgrade conveyors and palletizers as well as introduce bar codes to identify cases. Then the new systems were integrated (FloStor Engineering, 510-265-6700).

Now bar codes that identify the carton's destination palletizer are applied in the carton-sealing department. A belt conveyor carries cartons to the recirculating sortation line. After the bar code is read, powered pivot diverters send cartons to one of four palletizer lines. Completed loads are released from the palletizer to a transfer car that carries them to shrink wrapping prior to shipment.

Not only have original problems been solved, but less system downtime has lowered the cost of shipping each carton. Less maintenance has also reduced operating costs. Furthermore, customer complaints about mis-shipments have dropped dramatically. "We needed a system that would give us a consistently high level of shipment accuracy. We have that now," says Young.

If nothing else, continuous improvement is another way to say upgrade. And that is at the heart of materials handling activities at Toyota's vehicle assembly plant in Georgetown, Ky.

In the body weld shop, workers assemble vehicles from stampings and components. Approximately 40,000 parts, many of them small, are required. Many of these small parts had been stored in open shelving, which proved to be inflexible and disorganized. For sensitive electronic parts, the open shelving did not provide adequate protection.

With continuous improvement in mind, body weld maintenance manager John Raymer wanted to tighten control over the handling of parts in his department. At the same time, continuous improvement did not mean a completely new storage system.

Instead, Raymer chose to install a shelf converter drawer system (Lista International, 800-722-3020). The new system sits in the pre-existing shelves, saving the expense of new shelving. Label holders allow easy identification of parts in the sectioned drawers, which close to provide maximum protection of all parts. In addition, similar parts are now stored close to each other, making it easier to find them on short notice.

The bottom line is workers can find required parts much more quickly and easily. Raymer estimates parts can be found with as much as half the effort once needed.

It's a long way from picking 50 lines a day per worker to 200 on an average day and 300 on a great one. It's even tougher to improve accuracy too. But that's exactly what a series of retrofits has done for distributor Nu Horizons Electronics Corp.

As director of distribution centers Louis D'Antonio explains, the company used to pick orders from shelving. As business grew, that approach became inadequate. Nu Horizons installed 11 horizontal carousels (White Systems, an FKI Logistex company, 908-272-6700). Immediately, throughput in-creased and so did business.

Eventually, the company outgrew that facility and moved to Melville N.Y. The original carousels made the move too. But each was lengthened 43%. In addition, five more carousels of the new extended length were added.

There are now eight pick stations, each with one worker picking from a two carousel pod. Orders are filled four at a time. A light tree directs workers to the right location to pick items, indicating the quantity required. Picking accuracy, says D'Antonio, is far superior to what could be achieved earlier.

"We have to ensure the customer gets what was ordered in the way it was ordered. This is why they keep coming back to us," says D'Antonio.

There is more than a 20 year history of upgrading information systems at Conestoga Cold Storage. The result has been continuing improvement of productivity and quality.

Today, the company runs three fully automated cold storage warehouses in Kitchener, Mississauga, and Calgary, Canada. Total storage volume is 11 million cubic feet. Services include cooler and blast freezing as well as storage and orderpicking for distribution of frozen products across Canada and elsewhere.

In 1980, explains general manager Greg Laurin, Conestoga needed better control of its warehouse resources from inventory and people to equipment. However, warehouse management systems (WMS) were in their infancy. Rather than buy the software, the company wrote its own.

After nearly a decade and a half, WMS had evolved significantly and there were several suppliers. "We wanted to add RF (radio frequency) and use the Internet to handle online orders and customer information," says Laurin. "We felt the best way to do that was to buy a WMS and continue on an upgrade path," he adds. The system they bought (Provia, 616-974-8689) was installed in 1996.

Since then, the system has been upgraded more than once. The most recent was last year when a new version was installed to be compatible with Conestoga's move to a Windows NT platform. At the same time, the database was changed to Oracle and a GUI interface that connects to the WMS installed. Those moves standardized how the company manages information, making it easier to use and more productive for people.

"We're driving productivity and quality," says Laurin. "If we always keep upgrading we won't get left behind."

Moving plate steel is a job for large overhead cranes and hoists. Both types of equipment have a long service life but won't last forever. And in the final stages of useful life, maintenance requirements soar, especially in a busy steel service center.

That's exactly what Brannon Steel in Brampton, Ontario faced. In fact, maintenance costs on the aging hoists began to exceed replacement value. Worse yet, says David Lee, foreman at the center, contactors on the old hoists were changed every month. That caused excessive downtime that made it difficult to supply steel on schedule for customers such as Volvo, John Deere and General Motors.

Lee decided to install new wire rope hoists (Kone Cranes, 905-332-9494). "This is a whole different kind of hoist—state-of-the art with modern electronics that can be connected to PLCs (programmable controllers) for automated control. There are virtually no contactors to wear out," explains Lee.

In addition, the new hoist's brake is designed to last over one million brakings without adjustment. And the hoist's large drum design re-duces the bending forces on the wire rope, extending rope life.

Other advantages of the new hoists are due to minimal horizontal hook travel during lowering. This allows more accurate load positioning and reduced load sway.

The Cherry Point, N.C., and Jacksonville, Fla., Naval Aviation Depot sites had more in common than was desirable.

Both store airplane parts in automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS). That was acceptable. However, both of those storage systems were so old that they had proprietary controls that could no longer be serviced economically, if at all. In addition, operating speeds were half of the original specs. Something had to be done and was (Retrotech, 716-924-6333).

The first step was to replace the old storage/retrieval machines and the rails they run on at both locations. The next was to replace the proprietary controls with non-proprietary systems that could be easily interfaced with other materials handling controls for conveyors and other handling equipment.

Both systems moved to PCs equipped with graphical and user-friendly screens. This allows operators to complete transactions and diagnostics easily. The operating system is non-proprietary, eliminating that shortcoming of the previous controls systems. Both sets of PCs are linked to a host system in Cherry Point that tracks all store/receive transactions.

Similarly, storage systems at the two sites received programmable controllers (PLCs) as did conveyors that feed loads into and out of the AS/RS. The PLCs control equipment operation and enable quick diagnostics of all electrical devices in the integrated systems.

To round out the retrofit, terminals were mounted onboard each storage/retrieval machine. These track PLC mode operation and diagnostics, simplifying the task of monitoring the PLCs without interfering with AS/RS operation.

With the upgraded handling equipment and controls in place, both Cherry Point and Jacksonville regained reliability and flexibility required to fill high-volume orders with minimal downtime.