In the News Materials Management & Distribution March 2004 Cover Story "A Smart Match" Find out how Wurth Canada increased its revenues by 20 percent per year, thanks to a smart conveyor system engineered and installed by Beaver. Read the highlights.		Photo: MM&D cover - Bob Keough of Wurth Canada with Michael Leranbaum, President of Beaver Materials Handling

Wurth is the world's largest automotive hardware manufacturer and distributor. Its order picking and fulfilment operations are enormous and highly time sensitive. To make the most efficient use of their picking workforce, Wurth uses the Beaver Smart Tote conveyor system.

As an order enters the system, it is electronically linked with a tote box by scanning both barcodes into a computer. Scanners throughout the length of conveyor track continually track each box's location.

The warehouse itself is divided into multiple zones. The central computer knows where all inventory is located, and diverts each tote into the Picking Zone closest to the items needed to fulfil the order. If a Picking Zone is full of totes, the computer locks out the shunt and circulates totes until space becomes available.

The warehouse layout keeps operators close by their workstations or zones, increasing efficiency by up to 50%. Walking is dramatically reduced, and orders go out faster.

When General Auto Parts began their first physical move in 17 years, they turned to Beaver for complete project management and guaranteed results.

The new facility is divided into four distinct areas, each one engineered to maximize picking efficiency and reduce forklift travel.

Exhausts, mufflers and tailpipes are now stored in a unique hanging system, which leaves all the inventory visible and easy to identify, and makes picking simple. The hanging racks are just 24 inches wide, and will support as many vertical levels as the height of the building permits. Even better, the height levels of individual racks can be easily changed from year to year.

Small cartons are stored on boltless metal pan shelving, custom installed in heights of nine or 13 shelves per unit profile, based on the size of the cartons themselves. More efficient use of space means bottom line savings in labour and facilities.

The other two racking areas are for storage of heavy items: pallet racking for palletized items, and racking with wiremesh deck shelves for easy caselot and broken-pallet storage and picking.

For Diverco, Beaver engineered a unique storage and retrieval system for bulky and unwieldy parts: automotive transmissions. Before Beaver, Diverco had stored refurbushed transmissions on wooden pallets (4-6 per pallet), using traditional pallet racking. This meant that when a given transmission was required, the entire pallet had to come down off the rack.

Beaver built rack beams from structural round pipe fabricated for Diverco's precise load and weight distribution requirements. This allows individual transmissions to hang from simple S-hooks.

Now, an order for one transmission only requires moving one transmission. The result? More efficient use of space, and drastically reduced handling costs.

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