Columbus Vegetable Oils

New Storage System Increases Capacity

3,500 More Pallet Positions

Efficient Storage

The company did not have to purchase another warehouse.

Increase Productivity

The warehouse team is no longer physically rotating stock, reducing traffic flow by two-thirds. And, forklift operators who used to spend a good deal of time driving all around the facility are now able to be more productive in their work.

Create Space

Realised 50% more warehouse space.

“I look forward to working with Crown again to design racking and pallet flow for future new buildings. The Crown team did a great job. They were very flexible and knew exactly how to handle the project.”

 

Paul Cochrane

Inventory Manager - Columbus Vegetable Oils

ColumbusVegetable-headshot

Application

Columbus Vegetable Oils processes and packages more than 100 different shortening and oils within its 30,658-square-metre (330,000-square-foot) warehouse in Des Plaines, Illinois.

 

Challenge

Unexpected growth significantly strained the warehouse’s capacity and threatened to negatively impact warehouse flow. At that time, the facility did not contain any racking. Product was stacked on pallets, which were placed directly on the floor. A business increased, more pallets were added, which in turn took up more space and increased placement and retrieval times. As space disappeared, it came more difficult to manually rotate product, which slightly increased the risk of oil spoilage.

Solution

Crown worked closely with Rack Builders, Inc. and Mallard Manufacturing to create a dynamic storage system comprised of push-back racks for put-away aisles and pallet-flow racks for shipping aisles. The pallet flow racks apply the “first in, first out” principle. When the front pallet is removed, the remaining pallets slide into place. The racks support 127-cm (50-inch) high totes containing up to a ton of product each. With the new racking system in place, Columbus Oils is now able to meets its growing capacity needs.