• A leading Lawn and Garden company, located in the Northeast, determined that their projected sales growth would soon outpace their existing warehouse space

• The company enlisted the resources of SCE to assist in the identification of warehousing options for both the near and long term

 

The subject company designs, manufactures, and distributes products for the Lawn and Garden industry, selling their products to Big Box Retailers, as well as to leading Hardware stores, and on the Web. The majority of products are Make-to-Stock, and Sales were projected to grow at a sustained rate that would soon reach a level not possible to support with the current warehouse space. The company determined that additional warehouse space would have to be found – either by leasing existing space or constructing and owning a new building. They requested that SCE identify several options that would solve the need for space, while minimizing additional cost.

 

While assisting in the identification of potential new locations, SCE determined that it might be possibleto use the current warehouse to support near-term sales growth; however, it would
require work on two fronts – improving daily operations in the warehouse, as well as a
concerted effort to improve how the company forecasted sales and planned production.

 

SCE introduced best practice warehouse picking, storage and truck loading tasks, and created a new layout for the warehouse, improving throughput. At the same time, SCE worked with a cross-functional team to formalize a Demand Planning Process, and dramatically changed the way the company had previously scheduled their blow molding and injection molding machines. The change that was introduced cut warehouse inventory of Work-in-Process (WIP) by more than 30% - freeing up space inthe Warehouse that enabled the changes needed to solidify the adoption of the best practices.

 

In addition to the reduction in WIP inventory, other changes in the Warehouse included creating space to pre-stage as many as 12 shipments in advance of pick-up, reducing truck-loading time from an average of 2 hours to 20 minutes. This change enabled the company to load and ship to
customers more than twice as many trucks per day, which had been a significant bottleneck in the past.

 

While facilitating these changes, SCE also identified cost savings and additional revenue for the company of over $600k, primarily through the revision of existing informal Business Rules.

 

Once these changes were in place, SCE worked with the company to select an appropriate Warehouse Management System (WMS) provider and facilitated the transition to the new technology. The adoption of the WMS enables the company to take the next step in utilizing best
practices in its warehouse operations.

The changes introduced by SCE have allowed the company to postpone (and possibly eliminate) the need to build a new warehouse or expend additional monthly lease expenses for an
existing space.