Automation at its distribution centres has driven improvements in productivity and efficiency in retail group Edcon`s logistics operations.
"Ten years ago, it took a unit 25 days to get from the front end of a distribution centre to a store, but now it takes at most six days to get through the distribution centre to a store, and often it can happen on the same day it arrives," says Edcon group merchandise logistics executive Martin Deall.
Deall was speaking at a tour of the group`s Gauteng Distribution Centre in Spartan yesterday, the youngest of the group`s four distribution centres.
The 24 000m2 facility, completed in 2004, handles distribution for Jet-mart, Edgars, Boardmans and CNA.
The centre has a belt-driven conveyor system rather than rollers, giving it the ability to handle units of different sizes and weights, and a cross-belt sorter that can handle cartons ranging from 35g to 35kg.
The entire facility is virtually paperless. Deall says the only piece of paper generated serves to link orders and detail locations and contents of specific cartons linked to an order.
"Everything else goes through the system via RF handheld devices," he says.
Edcon CIO Henri Slabbert says the computer equipment in the Gauteng Distribution Centre, as well as that in the Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban, is connected to a Unix box, with all the information systems in the centres being centralised.
This enables accurate tracking right through the supply chain. A carton can be traced through the system right down to which shelf it is on in the centre.
Perk Nxumalo, the distribution centre`s general manager, says only 75 full-time staff are employed at the facility. "Depending on capacity and volumes, we can staff up and staff down," he adds.
Barcodes on cartons drive the sorting process, with the cross-belt sorter automatically sorting cartons according to routes through 36 doors.
Nxumalo says last year the centre achieved a cost per unit of 37.8c against a budgeted 42.4c. The group is projecting that 59 million units will be processed at the centre in the 2007 financial year at a cost of just 35.4c per unit. He adds that in December 1 million units were picked in one day.
Deall says that in 2002, the group processed 78 million units throughout its facilities. That is expected to increase to 280 million units this year.
He says the production flow system was custom-built from a package bought 10 years ago from a company subsequently acquired by Retech.
"With the sortation solution we needed something that could handle different weights, shapes, etc. It`s really a lot of bits of best practice we`ve put through."
Slabbert adds that all the software development is outsourced to Accenture.
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