This old work memory occurred at the Waco Center, way back in the early 80s. As I began to relate this story, I found it necessary to expand the accounting back to late 1978, at the now decommissioned, Cape Girardeau Center. As with many of my stories, it is true.
The Waco Distribution Center had finally been completed and the inbound freight was coming in. (In those days the buildings were called Distribution Centers, because we stocked and distributed merchandise to the Coop. stores. Now these buildings are called Retail Service Centers, they still distribute merchandise to the Coop. stores.)
Our Waco team had been involved, not in the construction but in the detailing of the entire center. When I say detailing, I am talking about placing location tags, on all the home locations so we would be able to properly place each of 32,000 items when they arrived. Our team also verified that the home locations were the correct size. There were other tags and signs such as, overstock location numbers, aisle, section and direction of travel signs.
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Let me back pedal a little to provide a little history which may help you understand the process. In 1978 I was a supervisor at the Cape Girardeau D/C. I was approached by upper management and asked if I would consider moving to Waco Texas for the opening of the new Distribution Center. This Center was in the final planning stage at this time. Upper management then approached Lonnie and asked if he would also move to Waco for the opening of this Center. We both received approval from our wives to the move, and that is when our work began.
Lonnie and I were not responsible for deciding what departments would go where in the new Waco Center, but we were responsible for locating each of the 32,000 plus SKUs (SKU = Stock Keeping Units, these centers have double that amount of SKUs now).
The Waco center was going to be 300,000 sq. ft. in size. Lonnie and I started the process of locating the SKUs alone in what was a large closet above the Cape office (this paperwork was also known to us who were doing the work as drawings). After a couple weeks we began to get additional help from staff at the Cape center and moved the work into a meeting room.
Each item that we located on the drawings also had to be written up on a location change form. Even though we weren’t changing locations we were making new locations and these had to be entered into the computer system.
There were also discontinued items, and new items that had to be added to or taken from these drawings. When a new item was to be added, let’s say a hammer, we would need to find where we had place the other hammers from this vendor, and then locate the new item with the similar items. That was a time consuming part of the process and occasionally there did not seem to be room for the SKU.
The computer would generate location tags. We had a folder for each side of each aisle in the Center, there were well over 1,000 location folders. The location tags were placed in each folder along with the location change forms and the drawing for that side of that aisle.
Lonnie and I were asked to decide whether we wanted a Tow Line in the Waco Center, or not. A Tow Line is an electric motor driven chain, that is in a slot in the cement floor and the carts would attach to the chain and be pulled around the building. Everywhere the tow line went, and all the diverters, took a 6 foot wide aisle. There would be diverters strategically located in various areas, allowing the carts to automatically divert from the main track to stocking, receiving or shipping locations. The area of the main track and the diverters could not be used for anything other than Tow Line Carts.
Lonnie and I had worked with the tow line at Cape, we decided that we did not want it at Waco, as it took up too much room.
Side note: The tow line was very powerful. I have seen it push a 5,000 pound fork lift sideways and not even strain. The diverters had a safety switch, that when the diverter was full of carts, it would not allow other carts to divert.
It was an accepted practice to allow the tow line to continue to run during breaks and lunch. On one occasion at the Cape center, a couple carts were placed off the track on a diverter area but not properly, so the switch did not shut the diverter off. When we returned from break several carts had diverted on to this area and had pushed the incorrectly placed carts into a section of 15 foot tall rack. These racks were bolted to the floor and they were literally knocked down.
Lonnie and I determined what the work flow was going to be at Waco. We would literally look at the overall drawing of the building which had rack, aisles, cross aisles, rest rooms, offices, shipping doors and receiving doors.
One of us would imagine that we were doing a particular job, and with our finger on the drawing, talk about the flow of the work while the other person looked for correctness, or flaws in our work. We were in complete agreement on the work flow for the new Waco Center before either of us moved from Cape.
Lonnie and I were in such close agreement, that on occasion a staff member at Waco would ask one of us a question, then later ask the other the same question. We were told that we answered the same way and often with the same words and expressions.
Lonnie and I put 6 months in the planning of the new center. There were many other items that we address during this process such as fork lifts, tuggers, office furniture, and file cabinets along with break room furniture. We made plans for the training that staff would need.
I moved to Waco Texas June of 1979 and Lonnie moved a month later.
I have made this almost sound as if it was all Lonnie and my doing but it wasn’t, we followed directions from the Home office and had support from many people throughout HWI. There were many teams who were all working as a larger team to successfully open the Waco Center.
Now that I look back on this, HWI may have taken a chance on two fairly new, somewhat experienced supervisors to open a new Distribution Center. Yes we had both been involved in the startup of the Cape Center, and I believe more importantly, we were in complete agreement of what we were going to accomplish at the Waco center.
If you are going to open a new center select your management team from people that have been involved in the process previously. Management team must be compatible. Management team must be able to discuss their thoughts, ideas, disagreements, but after these discussions, be in agreement on the entire process.
The history lesson is over, back to the story.
The Waco Team were in the process of stocking the building with six million dollars of merchandise. As you might imagine the truck loads were relentless. The team was unloading, checking, hauling and stocking the product like they had done this for years.
One particular shipment was of sleds. The lady who was checking them in stopped me as I was walking through receiving and said, “We got some sleds in”! I said, “Good”, to which she commented, “I had never seen a real sled, in real life before”.
I was amazed that a woman who was 40 years old, had not seen a sled. It doesn’t snow very often in Waco and when it does it is most often a dusting. Probably only transplants from states that have snow, would be likely to have a sled.
Along the same subject, a few years later it snowed while we were at work. There was probably 2 inches of snow on the ground (nothing on the pavement) when an employee came to me and asked if they could take a sled from stock, and during lunch go outside to slide down the small hill in front of work (the hill was maybe 30 feet long). I was surprised that there were adults who wanted to slide on a sled for the first time.
Yes they were allowed to get a sled for warehouse use.
Lonnie was consulted on this article.
Don Ford
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