Blum remodels
The North Carolina manufacturer of kitchen cabinet hardware adds space and automation to accommodate its booming business.
By Corinne Kator, Associate Editor -- Modern Materials Handling, 6/1/2006
Two primary markets drive demand for kitchen cabinet hinges and drawer slides from Julius Blum Inc.—new home construction and remodeling. Thanks to thriving business in both markets, the company's U.S. sales have doubled in recent years, leading Blum to undertake its own remodeling project.
"First of all, we needed space. That was the trigger," says Michael Geis, vice president of logistics for Blum's plant in Stanley, N.C.
The heart of the manufacturing facility, Geis explains, is automated storage that manages everything from components and work-in-process (WIP) to finished goods, supporting both manufacturing and distribution.
Before the expansion, the six-aisle automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS) was running above 95% capacity and couldn't accommodate peaks in production. To solve the problem, Geis oversaw the addition of three aisles to the AS/RS (Dematic, 877-725-7500)—adding 5,500 new storage locations.
"With the new addition, we're probably running at about 75% capacity, so we're doing pretty well now," Geis says.
Along with the expanded storage, Blum added 850 feet of roller conveyor to reduce manual handling in shipping. Also new is a more powerful warehouse management system (WMS) to handle the complexities of the company's expanding manufacturing and distribution operations.
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Five years ago, Blum made the leap to automation, moving from lift truck putaway and retrieval in racks to random storage in an automated system (see Modern Materials Handling, The warehouse is our heartbeat, September 2002). The switch to automation allowed Blum to increase production without adding people to manage the increased throughput.
The Austrian-based company's overall philosophy is to manufacture goods as close to its consumer market as possible, whenever possible. When Blum's European product lines become popular in the United States, the company prefers to stop shipping European-made goods across the Atlantic and start manufacturing those products in North Carolina. By automating the U.S. facility, Blum gained the flexibility to add these product lines more easily.
The AS/RS in the U.S. plant needed to meet the company's unique storage needs: The system not only feeds production lines and shipping docks simultaneously, but handles a variety of unit load configurations.
While a typical AS/RS handles just one pallet size, Blum had to accommodate three sizes interchangeably:
- A standard Euro pallet
- A slightly smaller "Blum pallet," which Blum-Austria uses to ship components on ocean-going containers to North Carolina
- A "Blum box," a wooden crate one-fourth the size of a pallet, in which Blum stores WIP.
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| WIP is staged on the production floor in wooden crates known as "Blum boxes."
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The design worked so well that, when it came time to expand, Blum was reluctant to alter the system. "We wanted to keep the warehouse storage as dynamic as possible," Geis says. He and his team considered lengthening the original six aisles of the 80-foot tall AS/RS. Instead they decided to add three new aisles, allowing them to maintain throughput in the system.
The expansion increased warehouse capacity from 12,500 pallet locations to 18,000. The new aisles have the same unique design as the original ones, giving Blum the flexibility to store any material anywhere in the warehouse.
This flexibility means Blum can handle increased volumes of components and WIP traveling to and from the production floor while also handling increases in shipments of finished goods to customers.
Automating finished goods shippingBlum automated its storage in 2001, but many other processes remained manual. Lift trucks still carried materials between the warehouse and the production floor. Production materials were still staged in simple gravity rack or stacked on the floor next to production lines. Shipment preparation remained highly manual as well.
After leaving the picking stations, customer pallets came off the conveyor system and out of the control of the WMS. Lift trucks carried them between stations where they were manually labeled and stretchwrapped and then stored in racks to await shipment.
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| Following instructions on a computer screen, workers pick cartons to build customer pallets.
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Today, pallets leave picking stations on a conveyor that carries them through shipment preparation. Pallets pause while an operator places customers' labels on individual cartons, then they move along the conveyor to be automatically stretchwrapped and labeled for shipping. Most pallets are then conveyed to the shipping docks where lift trucks retrieve them and place them in staging lanes. Some pallets, however, follow a less conventional route, traveling back into the AS/RS.
Blum ships orders in its customers' private trucking fleets, so the company has limited control of its shipping schedules. Blum organizes orders as early as possible so it's prepared when customer trucks arrive on short notice.
In the past, this required the company to store hundreds of shipment-ready pallets in racks near its shipping docks. Now those pallets are stored neatly in the AS/RS.
When the pallets are needed, automated storage retrieves them in sequence and delivers them to an express conveyor line—a dedicated line that moves pallets from the warehouse to the docks without compromising the flow of goods to production.
"Now, we can load 24 hours a day," says Geis, "and that's a great thing to offer to our customers."
Changing the softwareInitially, Blum planned to upgrade its WMS to accommodate the new storage space and shipping procedures. It soon became apparent, however, that upgrading the original WMS would require more work than just adding a new one. Blum decided to install a highly customized version of the same core software used at Blum plants in Austria and Poland. Switching to the new WMS required careful planning.
"We basically had a live system that we had to do surgery on," says Geis.
To begin the transition, Blum started the new equipment running on the new software while still running the original equipment on the original software. By rerouting some conveyor, Blum was able to split the two systems. "For about a month," says Geis, "it was like running two separate warehouses, side by side."
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| Customer pallets are automatically stretch-wrapped and labeled to prepare for shipping.
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Six months later, Geis can't help but smile as he talks about how well the expanded system works and how smoothly the transition took place. One measure of the project's success, he says, is that Blum accomplished the changes without substantially interrupting service to its customers.
The company hit its internal targets for throughput and for labor reduction. Shipping accuracy has remained high, at 99.5%. The new WMS allows for better inventory control, minimizing the need for cycle counting and improving customer service. And the expanded storage leaves room for growth.
Growth at Blum seems likely. Economists predict continued expansion of the residential remodeling market, and Blum has a new marketing concept, called dynamic space, that drives sales by emphasizing Blum's ability to make efficient use of kitchen storage. It's a good thing Blum's manufacturing facility has some dynamic space of its own now.
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