Are your distribution operations poorly designed or in need of a facelift to meet market demands? In recent years, drastic changes in order profiles (smaller and more frequent) and customer requirements have placed capacity constraints on outdated layout configurations and methods. With 25 years of experience, providing flexible and scalable distribution improvement solutions, FORTE can drive additional value out of your existing facilities.

Often, sales growth combined with new product introductions, consolidation initiatives and/or acquisition puts increased pressure on order fulfillment and distribution systems, which in turn stimulates an initiative for process improvement and optimization. An important first step in any distribution improvement initiative is to quantify the amount of activity in each functional area, evaluate product and order characteristics, and establish business projections over a planning horizon.

The intelligence gleaned from this information/data is the basis for establishing capacity requirements to support the business for the selected design year. It is also utilized to determine the equipment and space necessary to accommodate the capacity requirements of each functional area.

Consideration is given to all functional areas within the DC, including but not limited to receiving and putaway, replenishment, picking, value-added operations, packing and shipping. Potential solutions or concepts typically include a combination of material handling equipment rearrangements (i.e. conveyors, layout, staging, etc.), information systems/technologies (i.e. WMS, bar coding, pick-to-light, put-to-light, voice directed, manifesting, etc.), and may range from manually intensive to somewhat automated in nature, designed to address business issues and needs.

Don’t be trapped in an outdated, static distribution model that impedes progress and is not properly tuned to support growth. FORTE can properly pinpoint and quickly implement process improvements to existing operations that will increase order accuracy and throughput, improve inventory turns, shorten lead times, heighten customer service and maximize space utilization.