MacPherson’s is the largest nationwide wholesale distributor of fine art supplies. Currently customers fall into three main Sales Channels.
MacPherson’s operates 2 Distribution Centers in North America (Reno, NV and Atlanta, GA); the Atlanta DC is located at 2935 Shawnee Industrial Parkway, Ste.100, Suwanee, GA, just outside Atlanta. The warehouse is 196,000 square feet, with 55 employees on a Day shift and 15 on the Night Shift. The warehouse holds approximately 50,000 SKUs.
Here is the layout.
The warehouse ships about 21,000 order-lines per day, which constitute about 350 to 400 orders. (Their biggest customer is Michaels’, the stores of which receive about 125 to 150 orders/day.) Monday and Tuesday are the busiest days of the week and business diminishes each day throughout the remainder of the week.
Shipments leave by UPS Ground and by Less-than-Truckload (LTL) (of which there are about ten providers).
Orders are released to the floor at 0700h each day. They are prioritized into multiple categories by transit time and/or customer importance.
Order-pickers are guided by pick-to-voice (system: “Jennifer”) and/or by RF gun. The default pick-path, as suggested by Jennifer, is serpentine, and each aisle is restricted to one-way travel. Multiple orders are grouped together and batched/cluster-picked to increase pick densities throughout the aisles and to increase the efficiencies of the pickers.
There is a separate process for small orders (less than 20 lines and less than 20 pounds): They are all given to a single picker, who picks 3–4 at a time.
There are three restockers; and restocks are generally completed within the same day.
One idea under discussion is to direct any pick for more than 75% of the forward supply, currently set to 30 days, to the overstock area.
About 300 pick-lines/day are audited as part of the quality control program.
Every SKU has a forward location that is restocked from above, which is restocked in turn from pallet rack. Product is slotted by family (e.g. item-type and vendor) and by velocity (pick-rate).
Within the forward pick area, higher velocity SKUs are slotted in the flow rack and A Zone.
There are four primary locations, A through D. Zone A is devoted to SKUs that are core to Michael’s and also the fastest velocity items; B is for brushes; C for markers; and D for case picked or items that require repacking.
Develop an eCommerce blueprint for growth. How should the warehouse change its processes and/or layout to meet the growing level of e-commerce? With e-commerce, the warehouse will be increasingly shipping to customers (individuals, not stores) and so there will be many more orders but they may average only 1 to 5 lines.
The goal to continue to meet customer fulfillment expectations with the most cost effective solution(s).
All data is to be considered confidential and may not be shared outside the needs of this project. Data will be distributed to team leaders, who are responsible for distributing it securely to their team members.
