WITH more than 2.5 million items a year being shipped from seven different distribution centres, Conquest Sports realised it was time to find a single site that could house all its needs.
Conquest Sports was looking for a site in Melbourne that would become its National Distribution Centre (NDC) and have the capacity to house eight major sports brands, 2000 SKUs and 24 staff.
The site selected was an L-shaped three level split floor plan, with 2700m2 of floor space on each level. The planning required an experienced company to help design the layout of the L-shaped floors to ensure the NDC was efficient and productive.
Absolute Storage Systems’ MD Merv Clemens said the company welcomed the challenge, explaining the NDC was “not your ordinary floor design” and required much planning to ensure the shelving, racking and conveyors were incorporated into the floor space without restricting productivity.
“With so many SKUs and brands under one roof it was critical that each brand was separated in the floor planning so staff could easily identify, pack and ship each brand, when needed,” Clemens said.
“We incorporated racking and shelving from Schaefer Systems and worked with a local supplier to customise a reversible conveyor system throughout each level,” he said.
Conquest logistics manager Peter Moulder said that without the assistance from Absolute Storage Systems, the new NDC would not be designed as efficiently as possible based on the L-shaped design.
“We are in the sports clothing and apparel business, not designing warehouses, and we had no idea even where to begin.
“Consolidating seven DCs into one NDC was by no means a small feat,” Moulder said.
In the previous DCs Conquest Sports manually picked and packed hundreds of boxes of shoes and clothing lines. This was an inefficient and unproductive method of handling products and it was decided to implement a fully scanned warehouse operation in the new NDC.
All clothing and apparel is labelled, barcoded and scanned into a warehouse management system. The staff enjoy a higher level of accuracy in pick and pack operations, improve track and trace of SKUs and dramatically reduce the amount of manual errors on the pack lines.
The NDC houses a new racking system for each of the eight sports brands. The garments are hung on hangers within the racking system allowing the operators the ability to easily locate any garments required for an order.
Each individual brand is located in its own area and is easily identifiable. The system has improved the efficiency of receiving and despatching clothing lines within the business and has increased the pick accuracy for the operators.
The reversible conveyor system operates over all three levels, and has added a higher degree of productivity and efficiency.
Absolute Storage Systems 03 9799 2291, www.absoluteschaefer.com.au.