It wasn’t just about consolidating three locations into one and enjoying the conveniences and efficiencies that can bring. According to C.J. Khanduja, vice president of Automann, it was also about implementing new systems and technologies that improved all operational aspects of the business.
“It’s not just the consolidation. It’s a couple of different things coming together. It’s the way things have been setup,” says Khanduja. “We’ve implemented bar coding, we have a wireless warehouse management system. We’ve changed the way we pick orders; we use electronic order pickers and parts are stored by popularity, so the people who are picking the orders are very efficient. All of these things in combination have really made a difference.”
Automann showed off its new, approximately 84,000-square-foot facility in Somerset, N.J. to about 130 distributors and service providers during an open house event last month. The new facility serves as the company’s headquarters and houses about 60 employees. The new location – which combines three former locations in the Mahwah, N.J. area – includes the offices for sales, purchasing, customer support and other areas. Automann also has a warehouse facility in Turlock, Calif.
While the new location has been operational for nearly a year, Khanduja said they timed the open house to wait until the move was more complete and the company was settled, no small task with an inventory of more than 8,000 active SKUs among nine primary product lines.
The wireless warehouse management system is integrated with the company’s enterprise management system (ERP). All products are bar coded upon arrival and order pickers are guided through their routes.
“The order pickers have scanner guns and all the information is real time on them,” says Khanduja. “So when they need to pick an order, they just take the gun and it tells them how to route themselves and pick the order.”
In addition to optimizing their routes through the warehouse, the bar-code scanning provides greater inventory accuracy. Khanduja says there is a crew that fills the bins every night so the order pickers can concentrate on fulfilling customer orders rather than looking for products and replenishing inventory.
The facility was built from the ground up in what was previously a cornfield. The construction design allows for future expansion. Ceiling heights are in excess of 40 feet, there is a mezzanine above the offices for additional storage and the floor can withstand 20,000 foot-pound point loads.
