Behind the Conveyor: How We Drive Success for Our Customers

David Darst, Storage Solution’s VP of Conveyor and Automation, talks about his experience in the world of conveyor and controls, how our in-house team benefits our customers, and our partnership with a long-time customer as they scaled their business.

Introduction

“My name is David Darst, and I’m the VP of Conveyor and Automation at Storage Solutions. I’ve been with the company a little over 20 years effectively. I was part of a recent acquisition just a couple of years ago. My company was basically a conveyor and controls integration company. And that is what we focused on; that is what we did, everything that had to do with the electronics, the sensors, and the integration of conveyor controls. A lot of that has to do with PLCS, which are programmable logic controllers that bring them into the digital world of programming, control them, and decide when to turn them on and when to turn them off. And that’s what you need with conveyor control.

Conveyor systems are in probably almost every system that would be a warehousing or distribution type application where you are fulfilling a product and handling something at a volume that needs to be a bit higher than what could be done manually. So, at some point, every company or customer doing some kind of fulfillment distribution reaches a ceiling where they have to grow. They have to hit more volume. They have to hit a higher rate and be more efficient. And that is where conveyors come into play.”

What makes our in-house team unique? Is it their experience?

“So, the in-house team where it started was rooted in controls engineering. Instead of just it being something that was an add-on, that is what we started with. To develop that team, control engineers and control technicians, those are the people that have the brain power, we’ll call it, to get the ball rolling.

Conveyor systems can be very basic. They can also be very complicated if you’re dealing with high rates, very fast-moving shoe sorters, or things of that nature. A lot of decisions have to be made very quickly. A lot of processing has to be done to ensure that the right package gets sorted to the right lane and that things don’t jam. The handling of the product is very important.”

Are there benefits from using a single team who designs and installs the project?

“Yes, there are definite gains in keeping the whole project in-house from the standpoint of using our in-house controls engineers versus contracting that out. Anytime you contract something out, there’s a chance for missing elements, misinterpretation, and disagreements that the scope is not the same. When we can take that in-house because we have the controls capabilities fully in-house, we can eliminate that potential hassle for the customer where the customer would have to potentially get into the middle of that, which we don’t want to do. We want to make our customers happy, and part of making them happy is a successful project. So, being able to take, from the beginning to the end of a project, means knowing that you have those capabilities in-house and are actually handling it in-house. There’s a peace of mind that comes with that.”

What can you expect when working with the Storage Solutions team?

“What a customer can expect working with our team is that they’re going to get our full expertise on all projects. Sometimes, different engineers have different levels of experience that they are able to bring to the table. Obviously, your most experienced engineer can’t be on every single project. However, they are still our engineers; they are still on our team, so no matter what, we are pulling from a vast resource pool of engineers and experience. Even on the simpler projects that maybe don’t require the most seasoned engineer, if there’s a problem that comes up, they still have access to those engineers on the team to be able to pull from. With having it fully in-house, we can take a project under one project manager and under the different aspects of engineering, whether it’s control software or mechanical. We can seamlessly put those together to make it so that the experience that the customer gets is the best experience they could get because anytime we hit a roadblock, anytime we hit a challenge, we are able to come as a single entity to fix that.”

What was your experience working with DoMyOwn.com?

“With DoMyOwn, they started with us in their very, we’ll call it their, infancy stages. They were very small and had a very small warehouse space. We were able to put in their first system and start to implement a pretty high level of controls in a very small pack space doing print and apply, doing scale, some small sortation, and every time their business grew, we were able to help them grow. They would move to a different building because they were busting at the seams. Well, a new building, bigger space, and more volume are needed. We would design a new system that would handle the next level of volume and the next level of rate that they needed to push out the building, and that would continue through multiple iterations of different buildings and different expansions.

They’ve been a great customer of ours for quite some time, and it’s been a great relationship to be able to see our customers succeed and grow and for us to be able to take that ride with them as we were able to help them achieve that growth and that goal. We listened to them, we helped them, and even when they did not need a huge massive system, we supported them. When there are issues, which there are always issues that happen, equipment fails, and things happen, we supported them, we got them back up and running so they could continue to ship that product out the door, and as they moved into bigger buildings and needed more rate out of their system, we helped analyze that and get them the system that they needed, a true partnership.”

What sets Storage Solutions apart?

“I would say that with our in-house team, what sets us apart from other systems integrators is that there are some that don’t have any controls or electrical engineering in-house. It’s all going to be contracted. Those are easy to set ourselves apart from because you’re gonna get our team’s attention much, much earlier in the game when we’re looking at designs, when we’re looking at concepts, you will get our controls engineers input on that, even with the mechanical side. Once you flip over into the project side, there’s a vast pool of people to pull from, and we are going to have an expert for what is needed. We also have a significant amount of tenure within our team, and our team has been around for a long time. We keep our engineers, we keep them happy because the happy engineer is going to do good work for a customer and keep the customer happy. So those are very important things to us. It’s important to have a good team. It’s important to have standards.

We have standards, and those standards help for supportability, things that occur in the after-sales aspect of supporting the product and the system long after we’ve left the site. We’ve turned it on, checked everything out, and it’s running. Well, it needs to run for years after that, and as I said, there will be things that fail; mechanical failures, physical failures, things that occur, but we’re there to support it. That’s the full gamut from the quoting side all the way to the support side; long after the project has been turned over to the customer, is very important. So, having all of that in-house is a huge win. This is not only for us to be efficient and able to work through things in a timely manner but also for the customer because it makes the customer’s life much easier to deal with one company. And that’s what we are. We’re one company.”