Walking the talk

“They’re for small items,” Fitterer says. “Climbing gear, reference books, clothing—all products that would fit in a 24- by 24- by 24-inch bin.”

Overlooking the high-bay area is the 40,000sqf main mezzanine, where sorting takes place. Reach trucks transport product from the high-bay racks to the mezzanine, where employees use hand jacks to manoeuvre the pallets onto flow racking. From there, employees fill orders using a pick-to-light system. Powered conveyors bring orders down to the shipping area, where they are staged for transport.

The entire building is co-ordinated by a WMS from JDA. Workers in the receiving area and mezzanine use handheld readers to pick up barcode information, while the trucks are equipped with on-board full-screen emulation readers.

It’s a busy operation, and it works. During the seasonal changeover period this past spring, the DC contained no fewer than 18,000 SKUs. That’s slated to climb to 19,000 for the fall, and Fitterer is confident the building is ready.

Eye on the prize
So the DC has proven that it can handle MEC’s bustling business, but how does it meet the co-op’s green standards?

According to its architects, getting there required some creativity.

“Normally, an industrial building is an energy hog,” Coady says. “A lot of people don’t look at them as a venue for green building.”

The technical formulas that shape a modern DC—things like bay heights and conveyor distances—meant that the architects had indisputable rules to work around. The scale of the project did not make it any easier.

Early on, Bunting Coady identified lighting as a major source of energy savings. Since much of the DC’s activity takes place during daylight hours, the decision was made to use as much natural light as possible. As a result, a broad band of angl
ed skylights connects the old low-bay section to the high-bay, and each high-bay aisle has a vertical slot window at the end.

Windows are rare in DCs containing apparel, as many companies prefer artificial light to the damage UV rays can have on fabric. To prevent this, the skylights at the MEC site are set at angles that keep sunlight from hitting inventory directly. Each window is also coated with a glaze to dull the sun’s harmful effects.

The windows and skylights produce enough ambient light to minimize artificial light usage, and motion sensors ensure usage is efficient.

Improving the heating and cooling system proved to be more of a challenge. The architects originally envisioned a system that would channel air through the racking itself, but could not find the right equipment to do the job.