Apples... Spinach... and Dockboards?
By Bernie Knill
Some of it is standard material handling equipment, some of
it is designed especially for the grocery industry. That
includes grocery stores, supermarkets, warehouse stores, and
all types of convenience stores and markets. One thing they all
have in common, however, is material handling equipment of one
type or another.
Says Jon Archer, program manager of Minyard Food Stores in
Texas, "Our stores use manual pallet jacks, high-lift pallet
jacks, two-wheel dollies, four-wheel two-level stock carts,
six-wheel stock carts, and specialty equipment like two-high
racks for meat handling and bakery racks."
Not to mention the ubiquitous shopping cart. The shopper
takes them for granted, but the store manager knows how much
they cost to procure and maintain. Says Eddie Crawford, safety
director for Brookshire Grocery Co. in Texas, "The shopping
carts are an expense. We have to purchase the carts, and then
we have to get them cleaned and get the back wheels changed.
Sometimes the baskets get messed up and you have a piece of
steel or plastic that comes loose. You have to either repair it
or replace it. We have people who go around to the stores and
replace the wheels."
Some material handling equipment goes either way - to
industry or to groceries. According to the president of a
leading material handling equipment provider, "We make a
variety of things that could be applicable to grocery handling.
We have an elevating cart - it's a four-wheel dolly with a
lifting mechanism with a 30-inch range. Another product that
could be used in grocery stores is the high-lift pallet truck."
In the warehouse, of course, you can find the full range of
ergonomic products: lift tables, container tilters, turntables,
dock lifts, etc.
Material Handling and Logistics Begins at the
Dock
A grocery industry specialist for a leading manufacturer of
dock equipment has seen many changes over the last 20 years. "
There have been changes in truck heights, widths, and load
configurations, and increasing numbers of direct store
deliveries," he says.
Docks in stores don't get nearly the attention - or the
space - that they do in distribution centers.For example,
"There are stores that have improperly designed doorways, so
they can't pull some of the pallets off of the truck; they have
to manually break them down first," he says.
"One of the things we spend our time with is concentrating
on the designers, trying to get them to make the doors bigger
and the dock heights correct in order to accommodate the loads
and trucks they're going to be receiving." There's a big
difference between the old grocery stores and the modern ones.
Today's stores have pit-style levelers versus portable dock
plates - mostly because of injuries.
Change is more likely to come when a new store is built
because of the cost involved. Buying and specifying are also
changing. It used to be that the general contractor bought all
the levelers. Now there's a trend for the supermarket chain to
buy the levelers, mostly to maintain control.
Powered Trucks Are the Workhorses of the Grocery
Industry
Nevertheless, shoppers rarely think of how all the grocery
products got into the supermarket. It's probably the last thing
on their minds.
In fact, grocery stores of all types rely on powered
industrial trucks more than any other type of mechanized
equipment. Loads shipped from a warehouse to a store are just
too heavy to be handled manually. Not only are traditional
products being shipped on pallets, making them heavier, but
also new products are introduced to present more challenges to
the grocery industry.
Take bottled water, for example. According to the director
of marketing and product management for a leading lift truck
manufacturer, "It's high-volume, high-weight, and about 75
percent of the time, it's shipped on pallets to the
supermarket. Where people used to use a hand pallet truck, now
pallet-loads of water are moved in supermarkets by powered
pallet trucks with capacities of either 4,000 pounds or 6,000
pounds." Not only can powered pallet trucks handle the heavier
loads, they're also more maneuverable in the crowded back
rooms.
The problems are different in the warehouse stores like
Sam's Club or Costco. These are warehouse stores, with lift
trucks, pallets, and racks. Bob Footlik, vice president of the
consulting firm Footlik & Associates, says, "The back room
storage area of a Sam's Club is anything above the eight-foot
level. The bottom of the rack is where the customer is buying;
the top of the rack is the warehouse. So they're doing
30-foot-high buildings. " Contrast this with a traditional
grocery store where you have 12 feet or better empty air, Sam's
Club represents what is being done to the grocery industry,
what the pressures are and the advantages that mechanized
handling offers."
One of the heaviest loads for a lift truck would be a single
pallet-load of frozen concentrate at 2,300 pounds. A
3,000-pound-capacity truck is usually equipped with a
side-shifter, so you end up with a net capacity of about 2,700
pounds. The most common three-stage mast assembly - 190 inches
- allows you to store loads to 16 feet. While training is being
done for all types of store employees, it's especially
important for operators of lift trucks in the warehouse stores,
where the trucks travel along with customers.
Training is a priority. Some stores lean on the lift truck
manufacturers for quality training in their own facilities.
Another option is train-the trainer program that allows the
grocery store to train employees in-house. The reason for
train-the-trainer is that stores operate longer hours and have
staggered shifts.
Unfortunately, the grocery store manager knows that the
industry operates at thin margins, and that fact can color his
decisions relating to lift truck maintenance. Constantly
looking for ways to reduce costs, the store manager might
settle on the lowest- price service provider or buy look alike
service parts. Somebody may be charging 40 dollars an hour
versus 85 dollars an hour - but the repairs take longer.
(Material handling and logistics professionals who work at it
full-time understand this kind of trade-off. The grocery
manager, who is involved with lift trucks maintenance
part-time, will sometimes have to learn the hard way.)
There's a difference between the warehouse and the store. In
the warehouse, you want the fastest truck with the fastest
lifting speeds; when you get into a warehouse store, even for
the same company, these parameters change. What is important is
how the operator is positioned on the truck and how intuitively
he or she reaches for the controls.
Manufacturers find that one of the most popular lift trucks
for full-time putaway in warehouse stores is a stand-up
counterbalanced rather than a sit-down. This is because it
takes up to 12 to 15 inches less to turn in an aisle, and space
is critical. Also, these operators are off and on the truck
frequently, which makes stand-ups more popular.
Casters in the Grocery Industry
With casters, the biggest issues are rollability and
ergonomics. According to the executive vice president of a
leading caster manufacturer, a solution might be in the
bearings or wheel tread or harder durometer urethane - anything
that allows the cart to be pushed with less
force.
Larger-diameter wheels tend to make rolling easier.
Some caster manufacturers are switching to a precision ball
bearings in many wheels, which require no maintenance.
RFID Has Expensive Advantages
With all the attention radio frequency identification (RFID) is
getting, every store manager (or a centralized research
department) has at least looked at it. "We maintain an
inventory by means of bar coding. We're getting into RFID,
which is still out for debate," says a systems sales manager of
a manufacturer of material handling and logistics equipment and
systems.
Everyone associated with the grocery industry sees the
advantages of RFID. "You have inventory visibility, theft
protection, a check on the freshness of the product if it's
perishable." Industry experts say that the stumbling blocks are
cost and reliability.
Feeding the Grocery Store
While the grocery store tends to smaller shipments that are
more accurate and manageable, and limited to hand trucks and
pallets, the warehouse uses the latest material handling
equipment - conveyors and sorters, for instance - to move
merchandise.
Nevertheless, the warehouse doesn't get a free ride.
Distribution centers have difficulty making smaller shipments
that are more accurate and manageable. Rather than shipping
palletloads of multiple layers of the same stock keeping unit
(SKU) on the pallet, some stores may prefer only a couple of
cartons of a certain product. Getting that type of palletload -
a mixed palletload - to the store dock can be one of the
toughest hurdles the distribution center encounters.
According to Jim Apple, partner in the Progress Group
consulting organization, Europe has some of the same
grocery-handling problems that we have in the United States.
However, because many grocery outlets are small, a roll cage is
used instead of a pallet because it is easier to get down the
aisle. " In Europe, everything that comes in goes directly to
the shelves; they don't have a back room," he says.
Grocery Has Its Challenges
In 2002, there were 86,000 grocery stores, according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Thus, any problem you find in
a supermarket is multiplied by thousands.
Proliferation. SKU proliferation has been dramatic in
the grocery industry. For example, five or ten years ago, you
had 5,000 or 6,000 products; now you're approaching 15,000 to
20,000 SKUs.There are redundant SKUs, like fresh and canned;
you also have plastic and glass - packaging is part of it - you
have juice cartons small, medium, and large. The variety for
the customer has improved, but it's a challenge to manage the
inventory.
Weight. "As a consumer, one thing I'm seeing more of
are the specials like 40-pound sacks of dog food. They take
them out and put them in the open spaces," says the president
of a material handling equipment manufacturer. "That shopping
cart is about 30 inches high, and if I want pick up a 40-pound
sack, I have to pick it up off the floor and lift it into the
shopping cart."
If you are interested in reading more about where supply
chain logistics is today and how it is evolving, find the
Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) 2005 Logistics Survey
at
www.gmabrands.com/publications/docs/2005GM
ALogisticsSurvey.pdf.
Bernie Knill has been writing about material handling and
logistics for more than 35 years. Currently, he is an
Editor-at-Large for Modern Materials Handling magazine. He is a
recipient of the 1992 Reed-Apple Award sponsored by The
Material Handling Education Foundation, Inc., and the William
T. Shirk Award sponsored by the Material Handling and
Management Society.