Seafield Logistics

Warehouse Review

Seafield Logistics were faced with a dilemma. They need to develop a warehouse that would hold in excess of 40,000 pallets and cope with the 24/7 workload of a food distribution operation, including high stock turn and seasonal peaks. The parcel of land they had to build on did not allow for the building of a large enough warehouse, so they were faced with the option of building two warehouses and splitting the operation across the two buildings, albeit on one site.

Analysis of detailed order data by the Davies & Robson team showed that the conventional picking method wasn’t required for this operation. Davies & Robson developed a plan to pick orders by line, using marshalling areas for products awaiting picking and finished orders. This separates the pick area from the storage area and allows the use of high density storage such as narrow aisle racking.

Could the storage system cope with the throughput of the operation? Again Davies & Robson was able to demonstrate that the work rate of the FLT’s was able to manage the throughput, both from the manufacturing plant and for despatch, even at peak periods of the year.

The result of this was that Seafield Logistics could actually build a single warehouse that held 40,000+ pallets, and coped with the throughput, and still retain space on the site for the future development of the second warehouse if needed.

To conclude the project, Davies & Robson used work study standards to build a budget for the operation and reviewed the IT functionality requirements of the Warehouse Management System.

Mike Hyde, Business Development Manager for Seafield Logistics, said: “Davies & Robson’s alternative approach – looking at the problem from a different point of view, allowed us to develop a very efficient, cost effective warehouse. We are very pleased with the solution and the fact that it was delivered within three weeks of commissioning.”

www.seafield.co.uk