Project Details
[Return to Previous Page]Maximizing Storage Capacity and Pick Rate in a Distribution Center Through Rack Reconfiguration and Slotting Optimization
Company: Gordon Food Service, Inc.
Major(s):
Primary: IE
Secondary: ME
Non-Disclosure Agreement: YES
Intellectual Property: NO
Gordon Food Service is a family owned food distribution company founded in 1897 and headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It is the largest family operated broadline food distributor in North America, delivering fresh, frozen, and dry food products and related supplies to restaurants, healthcare facilities, schools, and other foodservice operations across the United States and Canada, and it also operates a chain of retail stores that are open to the public. Its distribution centers move high volumes of temperature controlled product every day, which makes efficient use of storage space and labor essential to the operation. This project focuses on increasing the effective storage and throughput capacity of the freezer zone of an existing Gordon Food Service distribution center. During seasonal peaks the facility experiences high slot occupancy while cubic utilization across the rack system remains substantially lower. This gap suggests that the current rack configuration, including bay heights and slot sizes, is not well aligned with the product profiles moving through the building. The operational consequences are significant. Inbound product that does not fit its assigned location must be down stacked, which creates uneven cube on some of the pallets. Inbound product that arrives with less than maximum reserve cube leads to uneven utilization of reserve storage and increased travel for put away and replenishment. The site does use a slotting tool to model alternative configurations, but the process relies on manual trial and error and its effectiveness is limited by incomplete vendor pallet shipping data. The student team will analyze the current state and design a comprehensive rack and slotting configuration that improves cubic utilization and material handling efficiency in the freezer reserve area. The scope includes building models to compare inbound pallet profiles against slot sizes and optimizing reserve and pick placement. All recommendations must be practical to implement within a live operational environment and must align with the long range growth plan for the site. The team is expected to produce five deliverables. The first is a current state analysis and alignment model that examines freezer storage utilization, compares slot occupancy against cubic utilization, and analyzes how incoming products compare to available reserve slot sizes while taking pick location size into account, using both historical data and future forecasts to identify alignment gaps. The second is a rack configuration and reserve height proposal that determines the optimal rack height for storing freezer reserve pallets, presented as a set of full and partial re racking options with layout drawings and an estimate of the efficiency and capacity gained. The third is a data driven slotting methodology for the freezer that minimizes travel time for selectors without creating material handling inefficiencies, including a module selection slotting strategy that determines the most efficient front to back placement. The fourth is a projected impact analysis that uses simulation to show the impact on storage capacity, reserve utilization, material handling, and selection. The fifth is a written report and a presentation suitable for review by operations leadership. The team will work directly with operations and engineering leadership during site visits and will have access to facility layouts, operating data, and outputs from the existing slotting tool. Baseline performance data will be shared with the assigned team at the kickoff meeting.
