‘A place for everything and everything in its place.’

Early on, management at Preston Motors Group engaged with us to talk about the new parts warehouse site at Dandenong South being a ‘world class automotive and refinish supply centre’. I knew the warehouse super site at Dandenong South would support their other distribution sites in Campbellfield, Geelong and Knoxfield well.

The challenge was set, we needed to facilitate the storage and distribution of Holden, Ford, Mitsubishi, Hyundai and HSV parts as well as paint and refinish supplies in the 5,500 square location. We also needed to integrate to their multi-level conveyer system. The part mix included those of different dimension, sales velocity, make and material and was dynamic – changing by the hour, day and month.
Enter Dynamic Warehousing.

Dynamic Warehousing Aiding Efficiency at Every Opportunity

Dynamic Warehousing has a strong benefit set for the team at Preston Motors. The team of experienced individuals intimately understood bin, pallet, tub, rack, shelf or moulding tube storage but needed an assistant to maintain appropriate locations, or need be multiple locations. However, research shows that people will always be more generous with storage than they need to be. Dynamic Warehousing from Pentana Solutions understands the exact size of the part, location dimensions and velocity and picks storage locations to aid efficiency at every opportunity. With Dynamic Warehousing in place, management at the site are alerted to increase bin size, step up to an open shelf or when exhausted storage occurs. The continued use of Dynamic Warehousing keeps the fifteen pick zones at Preston Motors warehouse optimized for storage and picking efficiency.

Distributing Small Automotive Parts - Fast

In order to further assist efficient picking, unpacking and put away of parts, Preston Motors Group also uses Pentana Solutions RF barcode Management Module. With ten conveyable zones over two levels, high rise picking and bulk storage, there is a lot of opportunity for error however, with the RF Barcode Management Module they are provided with great visibility inside the DMS of the status. All orders sent for picking are controlled at the individual zone level with stage based statuses showing either not started, picking or finished. This makes it easy for anyone with ERAnet access to understand where each and every pick job is and lend a hand if need be.

I look forward to working with Preston Motors on future projects.

Author, Noel Connelly