Like many companies, Dell began using simulation software to develop and test traditional materials handling concepts inside the four walls of its facilities.

Given the computer maker's reputation for operational innovation, it's not surprising that Dell began looking for ways to apply simulation to improve operations outside the four walls of a facility, beginning with the yard and dock activities at a 214,000 square foot distribution center in Nashville.

"The volume of business in Nashville has been growing quarter after quarter," explains Ameet Ravetkar, a Dell manufacturing engineer. "We realized that at some point we would have to improve our processes to extend the life of the facility, move some volume to another facility or build a new facility altogether."

The starting point for that analysis was the yard and docks. The reason was simple: before product can be moved through the facility, it has to be unloaded.

"You have an ever increasing volume of inbound and outbound trailers," Ravetkar says, and added that constraints on shipment interactions (limited docks, timing) forced the company to act.

Dell took a multi-step approach to simulating those interactions. The first step was to model the yard to determine the current capacity. Dell next simulated yard and distribution center activities to pinpoint bottlenecks in the yard and their impact on capacity.

"One of the things we learned is that we weren't able to keep up at the dock doors with the number of trailers we were receiving with high-volume products," Ravetkar says. "That led us to look at how the materials team was ordering inbound products to see if we could generate fewer trailers."

With new information, Dell began modeling different solutions. The solutions were then broken down into a six-phase action plan.

"We organized the phases around when the facility hit certain volumes," says Ravetkar. "We told the different teams involved in improving operations what they needed to fix… and when they needed to fix it."

As a result of the simulation project, Dell will have more than doubled the yard capacity by the time all phases have been implemented. "That's going to allow us to stay in this facility longer than we would have stayed," says Ravetkar.