Case Study – Petroleum Products Distributor

Description

The company is a major producer of petroleum products for consumer, agricultural and industrial users.  The products are sold in drums, pails, cases and bulk.   A primary distribution center was severely damaged buy a recent hurricane.  While the facility was being rebuilt, the company took the opportunity to rethink both the physical design of the facility and the processes to improve capacity and efficiency.

Project Scope

Our staff members were engaged to develop a master plan for that projected storage and handling requirements, developed a new layout to increase the warehouse capacity and new processes and system requirement to improve operating efficiency and inventory accuracy.

Approach and Methodology

The team developed several alternatives that assumed different inventory turns and markets served.  After initial review of the results with the client, two were selected for refinement and comparison of cost, capacity and return.  We also were charged with developing job functions and training tools for the many new employees that would be hired.  The recommendations included changes to inventory control systems to allow the use of barcodes as the primary data entry tools for product and location identification.   Although “in-depth” storage would be the primary method, we optimized the depth to reflect batch sizes and the need to assure FIFO without excess handling

Results

Although still in progress, initial information is that the new processes are easier for new employees to learn.