SPORTS AUTHORITY
Project Brief:
Prior to project initiation, Sports Authority had 2 distribution centers – one in Georgia and the other in Southern California. The need was verified that a distribution center was required in the Northeast. This new Northeast Distribution Center once online would allow Sports Authority to regionalize their distribution centers and save significant transportation costs of goods which originated in the Northeast – 40% of total volume was sent to the Georgia DC for processing then shipped back to stores in the Northeast. This project was fast tracked and brought online within approximately 14 months after initiation. Project management over 30 team members was required to bring the project to fruition.
Project Deliverables:
By working with the commercial real estate business partner, analyzed over 17 Northeast sites in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. By conducting a detailed community analysis was able to secure $1.3M in training grants and business incentives on behalf of the client. Facility was 416K square feet with a 70K square foot mezzanine for picking to maximize cubic feet. Over 6 miles of conveyor installed and central stock configured to hold over 10,000 pallets. Facility able to service up to 121 stores and contained 3 highspeed automated stretch wrap machines. Facility designed with Cross Dock Flow which reduced touches. This was the first use of a Central Stock concept for Sports Authority to allow a push – pull – push strategy which allowed store inventory levels to be lowered since prior was solely a flow through concept. Centralized Return to Vendor concept initiated for this facility as well.
Benefits
After facility was completed the facility experienced significant labor savings when compared to previous Sports Authority operations. The automated materials handling system generated quicker carton per hour thruput. Accuracy also increased due to reliability of automation. Higher productivity occurred due to the system’s ability to perform sub-sorts automatically when in the past associates needed to manually perform sorts. A new pathway of cross dock allowed products which came in on an ASN that were “Store Ready” demand cartons to travel from receiving directly to shipping after having the store number injetted on the side and shipping carton labels automatically applied. Single SKU cases were sorted to pick modules for put to store cases and also had an automated takeaway line – Since cartons were routed in and out of the picking area, there were less touches which increased efficiency.