Velocity and productivity. Those concepts drove the design of CDW's new Western Distribution Center, a 513,000-square-foot facility that went live just months ago in North Las Vegas. "Speed of execution, which is how quickly we can get an order out the door, is a competitive advantage for CDW," says Doug Eckrote, senior vice president of operations for the direct marketer of name-brand computer systems with $6.3 billion in annual sales.

"Productivity is a big push, since we're in an industry where prices are always going down," he added. "We have to do things better, cheaper and faster. That's what this distribution center really addresses."

The facility complements CDW's existing 450,000-square-foot DC in Vernon Hills, Ill., by serving West Coast customers. "California is the number one state we sell to, even though our headquarters is in Vernon Hills," Eckrote says. "As our business has grown, it became apparent we needed to be closer to our customers."

To do things better, cheaper and faster, CDW and its system integrator (Matco Distributors, 800-558-5104) created a paperless flow through the facility with extensive automation in between, including:

• Seven miles of roller conveyor,
• Tilt tray, sliding shoe and pop up diverter sortation systems,
• Automated scanning tunnels,
• Automated print and apply label applicators, and
• Automated box makers.

Incoming inventory on backorder is manually depalletized then cross-docked on the shipping conveyor and sortation system for immediate processing.

In addition to increased capacity, a second DC also provides CDW with operational redundancy. For instance, CDW's order management system can look at inventory availability at both warehouses before deciding where to source an order. So the two literally back up each other.

Until building the new facility, CDW was shipping up to 100,000 products daily with 99.9% accuracy from Vernon Hills. In addition, CDW was selling an average of 1,800 custom-configured systems a day with a surge capacity of up to 3,000.

Despite that capability, Eckrote says, it became apparent that a new DC was inevitable. "We were at full capacity in Vernon Hills and there was no more land to add on," Eckrote adds. "We realized we were going to have to build another distribution center to keep up with growth."

Eckrote says CDW had learned a lot about distribution in the eight years since it opened the Vernon Hills facility that it wanted to incorporate in the new facility.

"There are bottlenecks in Vernon Hills that we wanted to address in the new facility," says Eckrote. "Along with new technology, we wanted to implement the best practices in distribution today."

To begin with, Eckrote describes the Western Distribution Center as a flow-through facility, using conveyor and sortation systems from the receiving dock to the shipping dock. Instead of using carts or walking to putaway incoming inventory, CDW receives incoming inventory into totes that are automatically conveyed and sorted to putaway zones.

CDW relies on seven miles of roller conveyor to route cartons and totes from the receiving dock to storage and the shipping dock.

Automated scan tunnels have eliminated most manual scans, with the exception of storage and picking zones. They also have increased the accuracy in the facility. "In our industry, it's not unusual to receive a box with up to a dozen bar code labels on it from the manufacturer," says Eckrote. "The scan tunnel can differentiate the right bar code we need." The scan tunnels also capture the product's serial number from a box and add it to the packing list, something CDW's customers want for warranty purposes.

Like many distributions, the new CDW facility uses weight checks for quality assurance. The facility also takes a digital photograph of the contents of every carton as an additional check.

In addition to sorting cartons by carrier, CDW pre-sorts orders for carriers. "We can divide up an order any way our carriers ask us to, so that they don't have to sort them later," says Eckrote.

"UPS, for instance, may ask us to sort all of the orders for California to a particular lane so they don't have to sort them in their facility. We can do that with our shipping sorter."

Finally, CDW tied the conveyor and sortation system into the custom configuration center. The 25,000-square-foot product configuration center is in a near clean-room setting. The center offers expanded capability for CDW technicians to configure IT products to customers' specifications before shipment.

"All the pieces needed for an order are put together in a processing area, and then the conveyor automatically delivers them to a technician in the configuration room," Eckrote says. "After the technician has completed and re-boxed the order, a conveyor automatically takes it out of that area and delivers it to the packing and shipping area."

While the new facility was only recently opened, CDW expects to realize a number of benefits. One will be better customer service. "We expect to see sales to our western customers increase," says Eckrote. "We'll be closer to the customer, which means they should get their orders quicker."

Along with improved service, being closer to the customer should also result in lower freight costs to the West Coast. But the most important benefit anticipated is enhanced productivity. "Because of the technology and best practices we've implemented, we are expecting substantial benefits over what we're doing in Vernon Hills," Eckrote says. "We'll then take the lessons we learned and apply them to Vernon Hills to get productivity enhancements there."