The US has seen astonishing growth in distribution over the last ten years. This is especially true in the Midwest. Even the layman notices the large box warehouses changing the familiar landscapes along the expressways. To the uninitiated, it would seem that distribution growth naturally pushes a company out of their current sites to a beautiful, new building. But as supply chain professionals, we understand the costs and interruption risks of moving from a familiar environment to a new site.

Our May tour host, Magid Glove and Safety, is one example where the costs and the risks of a move outweighed the benefits. In the late 1990’s Magid’s operation wa exceeding the facility capacity both in storage and order processing capability. Magid considered moving to a modern operation in a new facility, but after exploring the possibilities of modernizing their existing site, they discovered that using conveyors, carousels, case flow rack, bin shelving, and variable storage location sizes, they could greatly improve the capacity of their building.

Over the course of 18 months, Magid completely modernized the site and now a conveyor weaves between floors and rooms to move orders from zone to zone prior to packing and shipping. High bay and deep lane drive in rack replaced bulk floor storage to provide improved density and reserve stock selectivity. Carousel, case flow rack, and bin shelving provide over pick facings for more than 30,000 SKUs with products assigned to locations based on cube and activity. A warehouse management system enables the synchronized flow of product and orders throughout the facility