Gardner Denver's facility runs faster with carousels
Gardner Denver's seamless consolidation of a manufacturing plant and an aftermarket parts DC combines higher efficiency and better service.
By Bob Trebilcock, Editor at Large -- Modern Materials Handling, 12/1/2007
Now that Gardner Denver has consolidated order fulfillment for its aftermarket parts business in the Sedalia, Mo., manufacturing plant, the warehouse area manages deliveries to the manufacturing line and to parts customers. Learn more about how Gardner Denver does twice the work in half the time with its new consolidated plant.
Lift trucks unload palletized deliveries at the receiving docks. The received product is manually entered into the inventory management system.
Putaway
Once the inventory is keyed in, it may go to a bulk staging area for inspection, or it may be putaway directly into storage. Putaway is determined by two different systems: A warehouse management system (WMS) manages the putaway of inventory in bulk storage racks while an automation control system manages the putaway of inventory into the carousel system.
Inventory is transported to the bulk storage racks by lift truck. The lift truck operator scans a bar code on the pallet and a location tag to confirm the putaway in the WMS. That inventory is now available in the system.Inventory for the carousel is delivered to a small parts induction area. There, it is repackaged and relabeled for putaway. Once the repackaging is complete, the new label is scanned and the product is put into a tote, which is delivered by conveyor and sorted to a workstation for putaway into the carousels. As many as six totes can appear at a workstation at one time.
When the operator scans a bar code label, the carousel turns and a put-to-light system tells the operator which bin to put the parts in. When the parts have been put away, the operator enters a “task complete” into the computer.
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Sedalia, Mo. Facility size:345,000 square feet Employees: 230 (3 shifts, 7 days) Products handled: Industrial blowers and air compressors |
Picking
Orders to be picked are downloaded three times a day. Bulk picks are picked from the bulk storage racks and delivered to the manufacturing area or to the aftermarket packing area where the picks are consolidated with other items before shipment.
Order picking from the carousels begins with the delivery of a tote to one of the workstations. The automation control system directs picking at that workstation.
Once items from that area have been scanned and placed into a tote, it travels by conveyor to the next workstation. When an order is complete, the tote is sorted to the aftermarket packing area to be consolidated with other parts before shipping, or it travels by a different conveyor to a segregation area, where the items are placed on a pallet and delivered to the manufacturing area.
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