CASE STUDY #1
Distribution Center Sizing, Interior Layout Design, and Implementation - OCI has been involved with several projects for this client encompassing sites located in Pennsylvania, Nevada and Florida. Projects have included: totally designing the interior layout for an empty industrial facility, including automated material storage and handling equipment, conveying and sorting; RFDC and related hardware and software for a WMS; upgrade and optimize the flow of material through the facilities; increase storage capacity utilization by implementing VNA configurations; and project management of the relocation and consolidation of all warehousing and material handling functions into new facility.

CASE STUDY #2
Materials Handling Review and Recommendations - Client is a food processing company whose primary products are packaged condiments, dressings and oils. OCI reviewed and prepared Baseline Measures reports for client to establish current operating standards while making short term recommendations to obtain a quick return. OCI prepared two conceptual layouts of the client’s manufacturing and distribution facility to optimize the material handling and flow through the facility. Client was experiencing tremendous growth and needed to know if the existing facility could handle the forecasted growth through the next three years. Although considerations were given to moving production and/or distribution into a new facility, the client desired to stay in the existing building. OCI provided the client with a high and low cost concept to completely re-design the interior layout of the existing facility, including automated material storage and handling equipment, automated packaging equipment, RFDC and related hardware and software for a WMS, thereby upgrading and optimizing the flow of material through the facilities, and increasing storage capacity.

CASE STUDY #3
Work Simplification of Warehouse Operations & WMS - Identified non-value-added process steps and manually intense materials handling methods that were the cause of bottlenecks and increased product cycle times. A number of process steps were eliminated and/or modified to allow for the design and implementation of an improved WMS and materials handling system. Areas evaluated included: computer systems, wave methodology, receiving, quality control, replenishment/put-away, ticketing, put system, pick system, shipping, and returns.

CASE STUDY #4
Work Simplification Study Of Blending And Packaging Operations - Developed several conceptual packaging and blending area design alternatives for a four-floor expansion to the existing six-story facility. Eliminated numerous non-value-added steps and reduced material handling by recommending improved packaging equipment and workload scheduling methods. In addition, OCI performed a customer profile analysis and recommended leveling of primary customer orders through better planning of supply chain resources.

CASE STUDY #5
Baseline Measures & Warehouse Methods Improvements - Defined Baseline Measures and critical operational criteria for developing a conceptual DC master plan design that incorporated operational improvements utilizing WMS and RFDC system technologies. The goal was to provide a complete interactive warehouse management system to manage the complex flow of material and provide the client with state-of-the-art warehouse control rather than continue use of their non-interactive, localized computer system to record material movement.

CASE STUDY #6
Site Surveys, RFP Development, and WMS Selection - Provide operations analysis and RFDCS project management services to specify and select one common WMS that will interface and support the functionality of five existing manufacturing/distribution facilities with the possibility of expanding to 8-10 facilities. Although the functionality of each location is not the same, software was not tailored to each facility operation but specifications were created to allow the more complex facility requirements to be met while allowing future flexibility for the less complex facility requirements. Information system considerations included: user workstations, bar code/RF equipment software, client/server environments, required interfaces, host operating systems and hardware configurations, network platforms and configurations, conveyance, AS/RS, sortation/diversion, printers and labels, and reporting options. This project is in the vendor selection stage based on the detailed functionality system specification prepared by OCI.

CASE STUDY #7
Operational Baseline Measures Development and Recommendations for Productivity and Operational Efficiency Improvement - Developed Baseline Measures of existing manufacturing and distribution operations for automotive after-market parts manufacturer. Upon completing onsite studies and development of Baseline Measures, OCI engineers identified a series of non-value-added process steps in packing operations and manually intense materials handling methods throughout all manufacturing and distribution operations that were the cause of bottlenecks, increased overall lead times, increased manning requirements, and growing backlogs. Although these inefficient processes were numerous, OCI concentrated on streamlining and/or automating those that presented the most attractive Return-On-Investment (less than six months), had the biggest positive impact on the most critical operations, and those that were easily and quickly deployed. Areas evaluated included: operation execution system and satellite applications, waving/picking methodology, pre-receiving and receiving procedures and information transfer, replenishment/putaway, material handling equipment and material handling techniques, labor intensive packaging operations and scheduling, and shipping documentation processing.

CASE STUDY #8
Fluid Process Material Loss Study - Developed baseline measures of existing chilled juice production operations by performing onsite studies and observations, as well as several production schedules reviews and analysis. The goal of OCI’s engagement was to reduce a material loss during production processes that accounted for approximately $1,160,000 on a yearly basis. After a total of 12 weeks of onsite efforts, OCI engineers developed Short Term recommendations offering a quick Return-On-Investment equal to 3 months with a less expensive implementation. OCI also developed a Long Term set of recommendations that offered a longer ROI equal to 5 months and a more expensive implementation. On both scenarios the ROI was less than six months without taking into account recommendations that would provide opportunities to recapture retail sales equal to three times the baselined material loss cost.