[01:00:05.01] Hi, everybody. And welcome to, I think it is the first segment of our educational sessions between LIDD and North American Steel. My name is Jennifer. I’m one of the partners at LIDD, specialized within our strategy and design practice. Joining me today are Angie and Waleed. Waleed, do you want to introduce yourself?

[01:00:23.14] Yeah. Thank you so much, Jennifer. Hi, everybody. I am Waleed Usman. I am the Director of Projects over here at North American Steel, located in the Whitby head office in Ontario. I’ve been here with the company for about seven years and working engineering, project management, and our implementation of all the projects in North American region.

[01:00:43.10] And I’m Angelika. I go by Angie. I’m in charge of warehouse technologies. Every technology that might get inside in a warehouse, it goes under the team that I’m managing. We’re doing mostly WMS implementation. Thank you for welcoming us, Jenn. Thank you for the invite.

[01:01:03.10] Of course. So today’s topic, I know we’ve been asked to talk about the operational elements that might impact some racking, the racking decisions that folks make. So with that as the starter, I guess we’ll lead I’ll put that to you. What does that make you think of initially?

[01:01:19.03] So basically, I can probably term that question as mainly what are the key factors which might be considered for any existing customer, new customer who might be thinking about the racking system? Whenever When we are thinking about a general racking system or even a storage system, we have to consider the number of product types that the customer is actually thinking about placing that in a warehouse, the frequency of the item movements, the pallet dimensions, the weight, the type of the pallets, wooden plastic, for instance. All of these will actually line with the rack load capacities in the space things. Everything ties up together in a whole massive warehouse. We think just like the warehouse layouts, sizing, how we can get the maximum cubic storage out of it. Along with that has to make sure it ties up with their inventory management system, the WMS, which creates a really key role, and understanding that the current capability of the warehouse, which is a future scalability, has kept in mind while thinking of future expansions or adapting as the needs grow in that sense.

[01:02:26.11] Yeah, I think you touched on one of the elements that I know as lead starts thinking about these initial warehouse designs, we are basing it, of course, off of folks data. We want to understand the products that are coming in and out of the space. And we’re forming essentially what we call profiles that allow us to categorize their operations. And so the three that we typically look at when we’re evaluating somebody’s operation is their inbound, their inventory, and then their outbound. And I know from our perspective, one of the main drivers that we look at prior to to establishing with you guys what racking is really associated to that inventory profile. Most commonly, we’re looking at the amount of pallets per SKU or per SKU lot depending on what product type that we are handling. And according to that, we’re able to establish, Hey, am I looking towards more of a single selective solution, or am I looking at something a little bit deeper, maybe some pushback, or maybe even something even even denser than that. Angie, I know from your perspective, when we’re talking about some of the dense solutions, how does that influence the WMS management within it when you are dealing with denser equipment?

[01:03:46.02] Usually, the way we will configure those location in a WMS, it will be one location for the entire row of deepness. If you are three deep or four deep, it will be one location to make it more easily when you’re moving out inventory. Let’s say you have a three deep position rack and you’re moving out one pallet, you just want to do one move, which is the first one that you’re taking out. You don’t want to move pallet three to position 2 and then pallet 2 to position 1 because you’re moving one pallet. But it’s hard sometimes for our team and our customer to understand because in their mind, they can fulfill and put different pallet and skews, and they would like to have different locations. But mostly it needs to be one to make the warehouse folks more efficient while pulling out inventory of that racking.

[01:04:44.13] Walead, from your perspective, when we’re looking at the denser solutions, what are some of the things that folk may consider from a racking perspective?

[01:04:53.03] In terms of density, the number one thing is that you have to make sure the type of the lift trucks that our customer is planning to procure actually will line up in terms of the system that they’re planning as well. For instance, for a double deep system, they will need to secure the double deep reach trucks. They can go with the high density systems as well, such as the Pallet Flows or in terms of the pushback systems as well, or even high density as semi-automated shuttle systems. With that, they can actually easily use the single deep, the single wide Pallet reach trucks as well to implement that. The make, the model, the turning radii, all of that in terms of will align that how a racking aisles will get designed and ultimately will impact their cubic storage at the way that we can provide them in the end of the day as well.

[01:05:45.15] I know we’ve got questions I often get from my clients is, how does a reach truck versus a counterbalance influence the racking?

[01:05:55.06] It’s a very good question, but it also gets determined based on what what exactly is the clear height of a building. Let’s say if we actually ran down to one of the project example I’ll give you out West, that it was a brand new customer who was expanding and we were working on their new designing. In the new design, they actually went with a 40 feet clear building. They were coming off from nearly about 32 feet clear building from the existing location, and they wanted to use their existing reach trucks. Their existing reach trucks only had the capability to reach a maximum height of 26 to 28 feet, if I can recall correctly. And the news design that we did, we were placing 35 feet racking in the new location, and the maximum level was as high as 33 feet up in the air. They could not use the very top two levels just because their equipment was not designed or spec appropriately. And even till date, right they’re having that problem. So throughout all their nearly half a million square feet warehouse and the good amount of racking that they have implemented, they just can’t use those top levels just because the equipment spec was just not appropriate to them.

[01:07:15.01] So you got to make sure, I mean, your make the model that you’re bidding is actually right. And we normally work, again, with the consultants like yourself, is really understanding the number one, have the product that they’re storing. Maybe the way that they got the equipment was not completely in order with how they wanted to go with that. And also the counterbalancing helps with using the heavy loaded product as well, such as anything that’s 3,000 pounds or even more than that, where the single deep reach truck might not be super capable to go at that particular super high levels where a counterbalance can normally reach as well.

[01:07:52.14] I might have a question for you, Jen, that I’m hearing often. You, when you’re doing your analysis, you’re often talking by weeks of supplies, and I know this will change the way you will propose a layout. Can you explain me a little bit more on that?

[01:08:11.04] Yeah, of course. When we’re using the term weeks of supply or days of supply, We’re talking about the ratio of inventory within a facility against the outbound movements. When we’re talking about weeks of supply within a facility, we’re talking about the ratio between the inventory and the outbound movements. If we say there’s three weeks of supply, let’s say you stopped receiving product tomorrow and you kept shipping, you would be able to keep shipping for the next three weeks until you drove that inventory down to zero. Why this becomes impactful is one, it gives us an understanding of what are the movements in and out of the slot. If a product is going to come in and immediately move out the next day, well, we’re going to handle that in a certain way versus if somebody is going to come into a facility, sit for two months, then before it goes out. So when we’re looking at the placement of product within the facility, we want to be looking at its weeks of supply. And then it also is a factor in regards to the density. Inherently, if you’re looking at bigger weeks of supply, it’s typically going to give more inventory, which is going to allow for something a little bit denser.

[01:09:23.12] Thank you. One of the things, Waleep, that you did touch on was when we’re talking about pallet weights. And I know that in some businesses, it’s more significant than others, but let’s say we’re dealing with car parts because there’s a real big breadth in what that they are dealing with. We can have some extremely heavy pallets and some much lighter pallets. I know there’s one school of thought that says, Hey, you know what? Just make everything able to suit every single pallet. Flexibility is great. But flexibility comes with cost. If we’re looking to perhaps optimize costs and not go the same system everywhere, how do you design for different pallet weights? And then how do you recommend that folk operate with different pallet weights?

[01:10:09.09] Very good question. One of the main criteria that we do in designing is the value engineering as well. That comes from the very start of the project. We don’t want to overdesign the upright, and necessarily we don’t want to overestimate the postloads as well that ultimately can impact the customer’s capability in finalizing the lease of any one particular building over the other. But the best way is, again, as you said, once we have determined the type of the palace or the type of the products that we have to store in, let’s say, a typical bay configuration, we will try to economize the design of the beam. You don’t necessarily need a thicker, heavy gage beam at every particular location, so we will begin with that. We will try to use the most cost-effective solution that can provide the similar amount of strength requirement for the type of the products and then go from there. As the heavier the product goes, the thicker or the heavier the gage will become. It also gets restricted by the type of the brackets, by some of the other limitations, such as in case of any flow spacing requirement for how deep some of the products can be, either we have to increase the frame depth or either we have to increase the flow spaces as well so we can accommodate an excessive overhang.

[01:11:25.14] So these are a couple of criteria which will go in line in determining what product will go where. And with that, actually, we’ll come down to the analysis part that Eunji mentioned earlier as well on the frequency of how much products and everything will be taking away, either They are doing put-aways faster. Is it more excessive movement of the products from the lower level as opposed to the reserve levels that they’re trying to place? Are they going with the high density system as well in terms of even pushbacks or even double sleep as simple as some of the manual static. So all these type of systems will be able to implement, but we need to scratch off some of the initial thoughts on the weight requirement, which will determine everything on how we’re going to be able to sign that.

[01:12:15.07] And Angie, from your perspective, I know sometimes we’ll see folks color coding beams to help the operator say, Okay, that can’t go there and that can’t go there. But what role does the WMS play when we’re talking about restricting where our pallets can go?

[01:12:29.03] You can create different type of zone to allow mixed lot number into a single slot location, for example, or not have lot mixed up. You can also have rules where you won’t put allergens in the same aisle as a non-allergen item. When you have everything designed properly, you can segregate those location into zones to put some rules tied to them.

[01:13:01.10] I know we’ve talked a lot about inventory, but one of the other major parts of the operation really is about that outbound movement. I know when we’re looking at determining what the requirements are for a facility, oftentimes we’re sizing the PIC slots, and we’re trying to figure out that balance between how much inventory will go in a PIC slot versus how much will go in reserve and then generate that replenishment activity. Actually, what hurdles do you sometimes see when it comes to replenishment activity?

[01:13:38.04] Depending on how you configure it, WMS will mostly have three or four ways to create replenishment task. The basic one is when you hit the minimum, you will bring back a full pallet quantity to refill the entire slot, so that’s the easiest one. Otherwise, it could be based on the demand, but the harder part here is to make sure that to bring what’s missing for the current demand fits the location. If you don’t have the proper dimension of your location, the interior and exterior of the rack and the item, you might bring more inventory that what could fit into the location. This could create waiting inventory in the Alley instead of being in the location, or you need to put it back because you don’t have enough room to bring it on.

[01:14:34.04] I know, like Willy, one of the things that we like to leverage is in reducing that pick line, get folks to walk a bit less within the facility. Then that means we’re going from not full We’ve got a lot of positions that we skew everywhere, but we will be looking towards, Hey, can I put some of these slow removers in some hand stack and some case flow racking? What do you see between the difference of those two styles of racking and when is it appropriate for certain customers as well as others?

[01:15:02.05] So both are actually pretty amazing type of systems, especially for the hand-pick items that we have seen. Customers primarily have been using both. I’m going to say not particularly one style, but again, both have served their own purpose. So for instance, in case flows, it generally would refer to the process of how the cases or the cartons are moving inside the warehouse, primarily gets fed from one site and gets picked from the other end of the as well. It would normally revolve around handling larger quantities of the goods in a similar individual style items. These are often for the high volume, fast movers, and the entire case, rather than having just a small piece of items that would go inside a bin. The specific type of racks that we call as a case flow racking as well is that either the beams that we will implement will go on the racking or they can go independently on a small shelving as well and can be relocated wherever, let’s say, the part the reconfiguration requirements ever need as well. This thing, what we have seen is she uses the gravity mechanism as opposed to any type of the automated system as well.

[01:16:15.10] So there is almost no maintenance cost involved as well, unless if there happens to be anything that will get stuck. It’s just a manual way that one of the employees can easily bring out any one of the cartons if it gets stuck. So it’s not much of a maintenance problem as well for the team, and it does improve the efficiency quite a lot for the picking operation, what we have seen. In terms of the binning, what we have seen that customers may need to rely on the shelving or using in terms of the single or double deep shelves within the racking system, which generally would go from anywhere between 18 inches to all the way 24 inch deep. And in terms of single deep or in terms of double deep within the shelving environment, we have gone as deep as 48 inch deep as well, such as the car components that you were mentioning earlier as well, which have really less weight, but have a little bit of long size. So you need a little bit deeper slots as well to accommodate that. For customers, we have actually provided them as high as 80 pig faces or even more in just one common shelving bay just because of how small their components were.

[01:17:24.04] There is a little bit difference in that site, one of the things.

[01:17:26.13] Yeah, there’s definitely some of these small parts either in car parts or health and beauty, it can get quite small and quite varied.

[01:17:33.06] Waleed, what would you say it’s your favorite project or more challenging one you did so far in your career?

[01:17:40.05] Very interesting question. That is your involved in one of the things that we have been discussing, which is a mixture of using different type of operational items in terms of our racking industry. One of the customers that we started working off with about a year ago, we designed a warehouse with them by understanding all of their inventories that we’ll be getting in our house. And by, again, by working with similar to you, one of the consultants as well, and understanding the A to Z game of what it takes to perfect a warehouse. In that system, in that particular type of environment in a DC, we implemented nearly about seven different type of racking system within a common warehouse environment. We left the zone for the automation and future robotic and picking as well. We implemented single deep for manual picking, double deep for a couple of their high volume skids and for more quantities that wanted to use high density situation as well. We also implemented some of the open warehouse shelving for them. We implemented can deliver racking for a couple of SKUs that they had. And again, in a similar way, we had case flows as well.

[01:18:54.10] So it was a mixture of everything. And the reason why we went with that is by understanding the type of the SKUs that they were placing, the Pallet dimensions. Initially in their old facility, they had just single select rack, which approximately they were missing out nearly 25% of storage spaces. So they were missing out a lot on their revenue, which a lot of times that warehouse managers, as much as they’re trying to gain the storage just because of early reconfigurations that racking companies or even we ourselves sometimes have done, do not really understand that that is where the main revenue-generating what the team is for them. So they tend to go with that part of the segment. One of the things actually, Angie, I would like to ask you as well in the end, whenever customers are reconfiguring, we were talking about the WMS, how easy it is, because we generally don’t tend to deal with the WMS team that much as opposed to what you guys do as a consulting, how easy it is for them to reconfigure their WMS system whenever they call us for reconfigurations or they’re thinking about any of the automation system systems for the future?

[01:20:00.15] Is it easy enough or any difficulties for that?

[01:20:04.04] I would say it depends. Let’s say we need to do a re-slotting because we want to change some layout and change the racking. It won’t It’s not complex in the system, but it will be a long process because you need to empty all of the location. So the system will generate tasks to empty those location. Then you can perform your physical updates, and then we can reapply the the new rules for the new updates that we need to bring in. I would say it’s not complex. However, it’s long because it’s involved multiple sequencing step, some IT one, then physical operation one, and then we’re going back to IT to make sure that we’re reuploading the new configuration of the new requirements.

[01:20:52.02] That’s good.

[01:20:55.01] I know we could probably talk for days and days here, but I think we’ll leave it at that. I know there’s going to be more segments as part of these educational sessions. I guess we look forward to hearing more from some other folk. Thanks, guys.

[01:21:10.07] Thank you very much.

[01:21:11.07] Thank you so much, guys.