SAS
Creating Convenience for Convenience Stores
From handling 2 liter bottles of soda to cartons of cigarettes, S. Abraham & Sons, a mid-west wholesale convenience store food distributor, seeks ASAP's expertise in providing higher levels of service to its customers.
The Goal
S. Abraham & Sons (SAS) is a distributor specializing in consumer
convenience products. The primary products that SAS offers its customers
include grocery, convenience foods, refrigerated and frozen foods,
candy, tobacco, health and beauty care, general merchandise and store
supplies. SAS provides distribution services to convenience, grocery,
and drug stores throughout the upper Midwest including the states
of Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio,
and Wisconsin.
To maintain the company’s commitment to excellence and service, it formed several corporate objectives including the ability to grow market share, placing itself close to the customer thus providing higher levels of service, reducing transportation costs, and providing itself with growth opportunities over the next five to seven years. To meet these defined corporate objectives, SAS decided to expand its operations by building a new distribution facility in Greenfield, Indiana. The new facility SAS was building needed to have its own set of goals to assist the fulfillment of the organization’s corporate objectives. The goals designed specifically for the new facility include having the ability to ship timely orders within twenty-four hours of order receipt, the ability to receive inbound freight and ship outbound orders twenty-four hours a day, and the ability to deliver error free orders. SAS knew if it could accomplish these facility goals, it would provide its customers with the ultimate level of service possible and increase its warehouse efficiency.
To achieve its goals the management team at SAS commissioned ASAP Automation and Bastian Material Handling to create a warehouse layout based on SAS’s goals and specifications. After reviewing SAS’s objectives, Anshul Singh of ASAP Automation developed a computer simulation to demonstrate how the proposed system would operate. SAS’s Vice President of Distribution Larry Derdaele states, “We never would have known what the staffing requirements would have been with an automated warehouse without the simulation study.”
Just the Facts
To achieve its specified goals and objectives, SAS’s new Indianapolis
facility required 1.5 miles of conveyor, 2 three-level pick modules,
1,600 square feet of returns processing, and over 25,000 square feet
in refrigerator and freezer space. Blue Arc Engineering, a sister
company of both ASAP and Bastian, was tasked with creating a custom
designed cigarette sortation area. Technologies employed by ASAP,
Bastian, and Blue Arc to achieve the desired results included a simulation
study, Pick To Light (PTL), and cigarette sortation via a custom fabricated
high speed sortation system.
Results
While the project was challenging, Larry Derdaele is pleased
with the new facility. He commented, “I’m not sure
I would change a lot about the upfront planning, design, layout
or simulation. We did underestimate the learning curve that would
be required of our operators. We needed to put more money upfront
toward training and not respond to it after the fact.” Larry
continues that the success of the project was due to “the
comfort level we had dealing with Bastian, Blue Arc, and ASAP,
the people and their experience. We found them very confident and
professional.”
