Commonwealth’s Ian Hobkirk and client, Perry Lundberg, VP of Supply Chain for Imperial Distributors will teach supply chain professionals how to “battle test” a new distribution center design at CSCMP’s 2014 Annual Global Conference on September 23, 2014.
Many companies that have experienced growth over the last few years have been reluctant to make major changes to their distribution centers (DC) due to unpredictable demand patterns. After the last decade of change, it seems the only thing certain is uncertainty about growth levels, rising numbers of SKUs, e-commerce changes, and a host of other factors. If the passage of time has not made the future any clearer, then the best course of action for growing companies is to invest in flexible technology and distribution center designs that can rapidly scale up, scale down, or be reconfigured to meet future needs.
This session will focus on a new approach to designing a distribution center when multiple potential growth scenarios exist. In our current economic environment, traditional distribution center design using inflexible static analysis creates long design cycles to explore more than one potential future growth scenario.
Attendees will learn:
- How to develop an analytical distribution center design tool capable of ad-hoc “what-if” analysis
- How to determine if this is the time to upgrade a WMS, or to hold off
- Which distribution technologies are the most – and least – adaptable to changing conditions: Pick-to-light, Voice, bar-code scanning, conveyor-based pick modules, AS/RS, Kiva robotic picking systems