Our Team Archives

How Storage Solution’s In-House Services Drive Project Success with Brandan Alford

Brandan Alford, Executive Vice President of Operations at Storage Solutions, discusses how our in-house services help provide seamless project experiences from start to finish.

Introduction

My name is Brandan Alford and I’ve been at Storage Solutions for a little over six years. I started as a project manager, working with what was then known as Team Mac. I moved into a Director of Sales Support role, where we manage the project managers and project coordinators. Then, this past year, I moved into my current role as Executive Vice President of Operations.

Can you give an overview of each of the in-house teams you oversee?

So there’s a handful of teams I work with; the first three that get grouped together pretty often are our installation department, our logistics and freight team, and then our warehouse team. A couple of other teams that I work with: our design team, our permit and licensing team, and then our procurement and vendor partnership team.

I think the wheel metaphor is one that is really good for these divisions. So, the sales team and our project managers are that hub, right? They’re the ones that are essential to the execution of a project and how we work with our customers. But these operations departments are the (wheel) spokes. We may not have all six on a given project, but two or three may be a big part of our ability to execute for our customers.

How do these groups interact with other parts of SSI, and how is this important to project success?

There are a lot of times they may not work together directly on a project, but they’re always going to be working directly with our sales and project management team to get exactly what the customer has asked for. That’s the benefit of all these internal departments, right? It’s one less thing that a customer has to outsource, one less voice they have to talk to. So that everything that’s ‘rolling up’ through our project managers is a benefit. That’s one less problem or one less headache that that warehouse manager or 3PL (third-party logistics) engineer has to worry about.

When we talk about managing a project, that’s not just the material; it’s not just the engineering; it’s not just the execution/installation; it’s every piece of a project or as much as we can bite off, right? There’s some things that we may not manage, but as much as we reasonably can, we handle that ‘in-house’ and we find that it makes things as frictionless as we’ve seen.

What measures do we take to ensure that our turnkey services team operates efficiently and productively?

You know, it’s impossible to eliminate all problems. I think what we’ve shown, especially in the last few years, is we take the problems, or the pain points, our customers have brought to us, and we’ve turned them into a strength for Storage Solutions.

Permit and licensing is a great example of something that has been a pain point for folks across the industry in the last few years. We decided to take a proactive approach and dedicate resources to folks who were successful in their previous roles in project management and elsewhere and dedicate them to being the best in the business at managing that piece of it. There’s always something new, but this group knows going into a project what pain points we’re going to see and what potential problems we may encounter.

So, it comes back to that partnership with our project managers and communication. It’s letting our customer know ahead of time what we might be facing and then when that problem happens, we’re going to talk through not only how we’re solving it, but how we’re going to get back on schedule.

How does the combination of these services differentiate SSI and help us serve our customers?

We say it a lot around here, but we truly believe that the customer comes first, and delivering on what we promise is really important. As I’ve moved into an operations role, it’s really been important to see that that’s not just a sales and project management mindset, right? But they’re wired that that’s their sole focus. That’s been really great to watch and get to work with a fantastic group of leaders. You know, we don’t produce anything, we don’t manufacture a product. There isn’t a widget that we’re going to market with. It’s us, it’s our reputation, it’s the deliverables. It’s when you say you’re going to hit a deadline, hitting it. When you say you’re going to find the most creative design solution, you’re going to find it.

So, it’s incredibly important that what our customers, as well as what our vendors say about us in the marketplace, is positive. We want them to be able to say that you can go work with Storage Solutions. It’s going to be easy. Their group is really dedicated to the end product, but they’re also going to be a fair partner. We don’t view anyone as a vendor. We talk about partnerships more than we do vendors, and I think that shows you know where our mindset is: that we’re here to help facilitate a project for our customers but also win for our partners on the back end as well.

If you have any questions about how our in-house services or how they can help you, click here to get learn more.

Why a Warehouse Consultation is Valuable with Chad Boehne

Our Team

Chad Boehne, Storage Solution’s Director of Material Flow Consulting, discusses the how consultations can be valuable to operations looking to find the best solution for their business and how Storage Solution’s approach differs from others.

Introduction

Chad Boehne, Director of Material Flow Consulting. I’ve been with SSI for two years prior to my current role. I lead all consultations here. I was the Director of Automation Engineering. So, I led all of these solution designs for our clients prior to SS, I have a pretty broad range of experience. I was at Redwood Materials, where I’d led logistics for that startup, which is an EV battery recycler startup. Prior to that, I was at FedEx Supply Chain for almost five years. I led the North American fulfillment operations with customer service for them for the country. So, there are multiple sites there. Prior to that, I spent six years at Amazon.com at five different locations, I had global experience there, everything from inbound to outbound, reverse logistics, you name it. I did it all at Amazon.

Now, when talking about material flow consultations, we have a brochure on our website’s downloads page. But what exactly goes into a consultation?

Yeah, so, we offer three different levels of consultation. They’re called optimize, analyze, and materialize. Optimize is your entry-level, some very high-level conceptualization of offerings. So, let’s say a customer comes to us and they just want to see some ideas that are out there. They want us to look at their floor plan, draw on some high-level sketches of what a future solution could look like, minimal data analysis and high-level ROM costing. The second one is analyze. Analyze is for customers that maybe don’t have data analysts on staff or they’re lacking in their analytics capability. We will crunch all the numbers and essentially show that customer; here’s what your data is telling us: there are 3-to 4 or five different options. Materialize is the highest level of consultation, including significant data analysis and CAD drawings to scale 3D renderings if needed. And again, because we’re vendor agnostic, we will usually show at least two different automated solutions as well as storage solutions, sometimes three. Complex timelines, complex project management schedules, very tight costing, as tight as we can get that they could use for budgetary purposes for, say, an upcoming fiscal year.

To get the most comprehensive data, a tailored approach to a business’s goal or goals is essential. What can they expect cost-wise from a consultation?

So, costing starts at $10,000 for optimize, usually in the 10 to $20,000 range. Analyze is usually in the 20 to $40,000 range and materialize starts at 40,000 and goes however far it needs to go. So, at minimum for optimize, you’re going to get one automation engineer who will come to the site, we will take a bunch of pictures, have a bunch of questions, take a bunch of notes and then you get the output of the optimization. To analyze, in the four to twelve-week range, depending on how much data there is to analyze, that’s going to be generally at least one automation engineer, potentially a senior automation engineer. Again, it just depends on how complex the data is. Also, I will make a site visit there to see how the consultation is going. And then for materialize, we will devote as many resources to materialize as we need to. So, this could be one engineer, three engineers, or whatever the consultation needs, that’s what we will apply to it. The timeline will be anywhere from eight to sixteen weeks. Our solutions engineers would design everything in the consultation, and then we would hand it off to our implementation team for the actual execution of the project.

And that’s all in-house?

All in-house, we handle everything turnkey. For Storage Solutions specifically, when a customer comes first for a consultation, they’ll work with us from beginning to end if they choose to, so we can do everything from the overall solution design, the data analysis, CAD layouts to scale renderings, etc. And then assuming that they decide to move forward with us as the integrator, we will then move it over to our implementation team. Again, just works with the same people that the customer has already been working with. We hit it off to the execution team and we’re going to be hand in hand the entire way throughout the process. There’s no breakdown in communication because it’s all handled in-house.

OK, but why should anyone look into a consultation?

There are a lot of reasons that customers reach out to us. The most common that we run into is “I need to reduce my variable labor cost.” That’s number one. Number two is “I’m out of room. I can’t go any higher or wider. I don’t know how to utilize their cubic capacity better.” #3 would be this is relatively common; “I know we need to automate, but we have no idea where to start. I’ve watched all these YouTube videos, and I’m lost. Can you please help us?” I would say those are the most common that that people reach out to us. There’s a little bit of “I think I know what I want, but I’m not sure. Can you make us road map so we can put it into next year’s budget cycle?” For example, “I don’t need anything implemented this year, but I’m planning for my budget cycle or my fiscal year that starts wherever six months down the road.” And they want a cost, a tight cost, in a timeline. They then need to take that to senior leadership and say here is this automated solution; here is the design; here’s the concept; here’s the overall cost, etc. They can bake that into their fiscal planning and get it approved. I would say a third of our consultations are, “I’m going to put it into our budget cycle for next year, and we’re going to put it out for RFP”, and because we’re also an integrator and we can operate turnkey, we will be included in that RFP process. But then, especially for larger corporations that generally require at least three bids for anything that size, we would bid, plus we’d have a couple of competitors out there to bid.

But is there any benefit for our solution integrator to do a consultation over another business with their own manufactured products?

For us, we’re more about building a long-term partnership than getting a quick sale because we’re vendor-agnostic. We’re not driven by a goal of selling our product over somebody else’s. Even though we’re owned by a huge firm in the intralogistics industry, we’re not forced to sell certain brands. So, when a customer comes to us and says, “Hey, I think I need a goods-to-person solution or a pallet shuttle or what have you, we know all the players in the market. We’ve worked with the majority of them, and we’re going to crunch their data and go back to the customer and say maybe you don’t need this solution; maybe the right solution could be semi-automated, and a lot of customers want a fully automated building with as few people as possible. But then, when we look at the data and show them the options out there, we will tailor it to say, you should probably look at this route based on your data and your ROI needs or your financial requirements. So, I think from our end, where we’re unique is we bring a ton of real-world experience to the table, and we are going to recommend the right solution, not one that we are required to recommend.

How does Storage Solutions conduct consultations differently?

I would say one difference that I’ve seen because I used to be the customer when I was at FedEx and Amazon, I used to work with, and one of the big frustrations I would have as a customer is I would be dealing with a really nice salesperson, but they didn’t have real-world experience, so whenever they would be trying to tell me what I should do with my building, it could get frustrating at times because I can tell that they didn’t actually know what they were talking about. I think one of the things that’s different with Storage Solutions is we took a different approach to who should be providing a consultation, and those people should be very experienced in the operation, like myself. I’ve got over a decade of experience running large-scale operations at the global level. We take a realistic approach to solutions design, we don’t make or draft a solution that just looks great on paper. We deliver solutions that I would be comfortable with as the general manager leading on day one. If I wouldn’t be comfortable leading that building myself, I wouldn’t allow the solution to move forward.

If you have any questions about material flow consultations, whether that’s for your warehouse distribution centers or fulfillment facilities, click here to get started.

The Importance of Our Industry-Leading Partners

Our Team

Eric McDonald, Storage Solution’s Senior Automation Solutions specialist, discusses the importance of Storage Solution’s partners that give our team the ability to offer a wide range of solutions to solve our customer’s business challenges.

Introduction

Eric McDonald, Senior Automation Solutions specialist, I’ve been with Storage Solutions for a little over 22 years now, and in that time have filled multiple roles in sales, sales, support, and leadership.

How does Storage Solutions select its partners?

“Our partnerships are really the lifeblood of our organization. Our partners are, you know, who support us and help us put together creative equipment solutions for our customers’ needs. Our goal at Storage Solutions is to be very strategic in our partnerships. We don’t partner with just anybody and everybody. We look for partners that have technologies that we know are going to be valuable to our customer base and select those strategically. And when we do select a partner, we typically go all in. We will do training for our team with the partner to get everybody on our team up to speed. We’ll do joint marketing efforts to try and generate opportunities together, but they also often provide tools for our team as well that we can use. We’re visiting with and presenting to customers, as well as when we’re putting together solutions from an engineering standpoint, many of our partners have tools that they make available to our team so that we can be efficient in doing our job and creating those solutions.

We really commit to our partners and ask them to commit to us, and that’s why we’re very strategic in who we choose to partner with. We have been intentional in how we’ve put together our partner network from an automation standpoint. There’s a lot of automation technology in the marketplace today and we are always evaluating what’s out there and what’s available for potential partnerships. We also have made it very intentional and have a lot of flexible, scalable automation solutions so that we can help a customer get started at the level that’s right for their business today.

When it comes to automation, they also have the ability to grow that solution to meet their future needs as their business evolves, grows, and changes. We approach every customer project with a technology-agnostic approach, meaning we don’t go into looking at a project for a customer with any predisposed notions. We don’t have to sell certain amounts of any of our partner solutions. We look for automation solution partners that are valuable solutions to our customer base. There’s a lot of technology in the market today that is fancy new shiny tech, but it doesn’t necessarily provide value to our customers and their operations. We tend to shy away from those types of technologies and look to technologies that we know will bring value to our customers, but also to quality partners that are willing to support us and support our customers at the level that our customers expect.

We look for partners that are going to help us meet and exceed our customers’ expectations. We look for partners that are going to be reliable and allow us to provide reliable solutions, meet project schedules, and meet customer expectations. In general, we think we can solve most customer pain points or business challenges along with the partners that we bring to the table.

At Storage Solutions, we pride ourselves on our customer-centricity. We like to really get to know our customer’s business, understand how things flow through their facilities, and where they might have some challenges within that that we can then bring a solution to the table to solve those challenges. Jungheinrich has 30-plus years of automation experience. With over 21,000 total employees across the globe, we have lots of experience and lots of resources we can access and bring to bear for a customer project. We look for partners that will support us in our customer centricity and be alongside us for that journey with our customers to create the best possible solution for them.”

Curious to learn if any of our partner’s solutions could be the right fit for your operations? Click here to learn more!

Behind the Conveyor: How We Drive Success for Our Customers

Our Team

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.”

A Project Coordinator’s Role at Storage Solutions

Our Team

Angie Rajski (Senior Project Coordinator) reflects on over 2 decades of experience and how the project coordinator role is crucial in helping Storage Solutions provide a seamless experience for our customers.

Introduction

“My name is Angie Rajski, and I’ve been with the company for 26 years. I don’t know how much time we have to talk today, but I have held almost every title in the company. I started out as Craig McElheny’s personal assistant, who owned our company, and have held many different hats since.”

What is your role now after two decades with SSI?

“Right now, out of all the titles that I’ve had, working with Craig as his personal assistant over all these years, he found my niche for me. I’m still a senior project coordinator, and that’s what I love doing. So, I kind of put off to the side all the other positions that I held because we grew so rapidly that it was hard to juggle so many different positions.

Eventually, at the end of a project, I audit the final project before it’s turned in for invoicing to our accounting department, making sure that all of the costs are accurate, the invoicing comments are correct for our customer, and making it seem seamless behind the scenes. We do all the freight auditing and just make sure that our customers are satisfied with the experience that they’ve had with our projects.”

How does the project coordinator’s role affect a project with Storage Solutions?

“As a sales coordinator, I always reference it this way, we’re the nucleus of the customer experience. So, we take the project from the beginning. Once it becomes a project, it’s quoted by the salesperson. And then, once it becomes a project, we take over from there, so we order all the material, we do all the customer service to make sure that it’s kind of like an Amazon experience.

And that’s how I’ve always tried to do all of my service to our long-standing customers. Is that when you place an Amazon order, you say, hey, I got your order, thank you. And then the next process is your order is ready to ship and then it’s going to ship. And then it’s in, you know, it’s in process. So, it’ll be here on this day. It’s a continual communication with the customer to make sure that they know what’s happening with their order through the life cycle, and they love that. They might not always respond to what we’re communicating to them, but it’s always a finger on the pulse of every phase of the cycle. We make sure that the coordinators make sure that the material is ordered correctly and all the colors are right on the orders. We make sure it is a seamless process.”

Who do you work with as a project coordinator?

“As a sales coordinator, being the nucleus of a life cycle of a project, we interact with every division within our company. We communicate with our warehouse team. We make sure that they have the right ship dates and the right material ordered, and they know how many trucks we need on certain days.

We also communicate very closely with our installation team, so we find out all the details for when the install is going to happen, who’s going to be on site, what time they’re going to be there, how many trucks we’re going to have for that day. So that communication with the installer is critical. If we don’t have the right material on day one of an installation, you can have people dead in the water, which costs our company time and money, and it’s just not a good experience for them.

We also do project launches for our customers so that we flesh out exactly all the details of what they can expect with the experience that’s going to be coming forth with their project, who’s coming, and what time they’re going to be on site. Along with that, we deal with our vendors, the partners that we have outside of Storage Solutions.

We have developed many relationships with several vendors who are our partners, such as Nashville Wire and Speedrack Products Group. They are also part of the coordination cycle with our customers to make sure that we have everything we need from day one of the installation.

We are also involved with our accounting team. We audit that project so that everything all the costs are analyzed and detailed out before we turn that in for the customer to receive an invoice.”

After 25+ years, what do you appreciate about Storage Solutions and the role you play on the team?

“Craig McElheny and Dick McElheny were the beginning of this company. They founded this company on honesty and integrity, and I feel for me, I want to carry that tradition on.

Even though we’ve grown into this huge company, the relationships that we have with our customers, our vendors, and people internally, this is my family. I’ve been here this long because I love what I do. And Craig, who was the owner, I was his personal assistant for many years before he retired. He used to say, “You know, Angie, you have to love what you do and do what you love.” And that’s why I’ve been here this long. I continue to enjoy what I do, servicing our customers. We have so many repeat customers. And that’s because of the people. It’s because of the experience that we provide them; it’s seamless, and we make it look easy. There might be days when it’s really tough behind the scenes.

But to the customer and the experience, it’s a piece of cake, and that’s why I’m here, because of the people.”

New to the Material Handling Industry?

Our Team

Joe Prestella (National Accounts Manager) discusses what it is like to be new to the material handling industry and what drew him to this role.

How can you be successful as someone new to the material handling industry?

“What I would tell someone who’s looking at coming into the material handling industry is if you’re someone who enjoys thinking on your feet, problem-based learning, and project-based learning, it’s going to be very rewarding for you. You’re going to meet a variety of people. You have a variety of different needs and circumstances that are going to turn to you and your team and say, “How can you help me overcome these obstacles or challenges?”. I like being the fixer. I like being the person who can help someone with the challenge and help them to see the opportunity that lies within that challenge to overcome it, and Storage Solutions has provided me with that avenue and the opportunity to do so. And it helps that I have a really great team that I’m a part of. I would also tell them if you’re going to transition from another industry, a lot of your skills are going to be transferable, but there’s going to be a knowledge base that will represent a learning curve. What’s been extremely helpful to me is just my proximity to our engineer, our project manager, our head of our division out here; my proximity to them and being able to ask them questions and kind of rub elbows with them has really helped me with my transition from the public sector into working at SSI. I also think it’s important that trying to identify a mentor or someone who wants to serve as a mentor early on will definitely help kind of flatten some of those learning curves that exist out there.”

What drew you to this industry? What do you find interesting?

“So, what I find particularly interesting about the industry is getting to work with different individuals in the course of just a year here. I’ve been fortunate to work with companies like Panasonic and Harley-Davidson and kind of get to see through the looking glass what it takes to make some of these organizations work, and you also get to see what you can bring through Storage Solutions to offer these companies to help them maximize their efficiencies and their workflows. So, being able to know that we have clients who are household names and household brands that we have something at SSI that we can offer them to help enhance their operation. That’s very fulfilling, knowing that I’m going to go home and open my pantry and see a label of something in that pantry and that I was able to somehow contribute to the success of that organization and also to the success of our own team and organization. That’s a very fulfilling thing to know that you were part of that. And even if it’s in a very small part, I was able to get a couple of extra pallet positions in this warehouse, which seems like not a huge consequence, but to some people, it’s very important to know that you were able to contribute to increasing and maximizing peoples’ efficiency. That’s important to me, and it makes me excited about coming to work every day.”

A Look into Material Handling in California

Automation, Our Team

Our team got to sit down with Storage Solution’s VP of Sales, Tim Schrader, in our California office. Tim has decades of experience in the material handling world, specifically navigating the intricacies of doing business in California. In this video, he walks us through some of the industry’s changes, specifically in California, and how our California office’s experience is so valuable for our customers.

What challenges have you seen in the industry over the last 15 years?

“That’s a big question. I guess over the course of my entire career, like the last 20 years, it used to be that if you wanted to start a distribution business, you go get some space, you throw some people at it, buy a couple of forklifts, and you’re operating – you’re up and going. I think as space and labor have become more and more cost-impacted, people have had to figure out ways to be more efficient. And so, developers start building taller buildings. People have really figured out that when they maximize cubic capacity instead of square footage, there’s a positive impact on the P&L.

Over the course of the last 15 years, we’ve only seen that amplify and get more and more strategic from a business operators’ standpoint or point of view, where now we see that operators are really focused before they take a building and even really start to operate a business. They’re really focused on what I can accomplish with that particular building and asking us as professionals and experts to weigh in on decisions to buy that building or to lease that space. And then how many people do we actually throw at that particular operation, and where can we sort of trim both those two factors, the square footage that we’re going to dedicate to an operation and the amount of labor resources that we’re going to dedicate to it. And where we’ve been able to be helpful in that is running cubic analysis on operations and helping people understand how much square footage they can actually trim out of their overall network if they were able to maximize the cubic volume of their building.”

How has this change affected what a project looks like on the West Coast?

“So, tantric question. It’s grown more and more from a very rudimentary type, and we used to call them box jockeys, right? Where they would really just move boxes all day, every day too; people are starting to put some really deep thought into how they can make the math work for them in terms of space and people, and we’ve had to develop with them all along the way and develop our expertise. We can lend some assistance in those two conversations to ultimately help the customer because if we can’t help the customer, we don’t have a business.

Well, another part that I didn’t talk about in terms of changes is that building codes and fire codes are always evolving. It’s always getting more strict. So, every couple of years, the building and fire code update in California is, forgive the analogy, but ground zero or epicenter for stringent codes getting implemented quickly. When we talk about international building code, international fire code, NFPA, California building code, and California fire code, we’re kind of the standard by which the rest of the nation adopts in later years. And what that means is that because we’re high seismic here, builders have to build buildings differently. So, we often weigh in on those development projects. We have to build systems, rack structures, and mezzanines to fit those.

We have to build anything that we touch differently here because we’re in California. Therefore, we have to pay attention to California’s fire code FPA in ways that the rest of the country really doesn’t or gets to defer to a later point in its life cycle, so we have to know a lot earlier on.”

Are there challenges specific to a project on the West Coast?

“And when we ask the question, why is it, or what is a business challenged with when operating in California, it’s a microscopic look at the operation, the commodities, the building, the slab, the sprinkler system, exit doors, exit lighting, ADA access issues, and photometrics that aren’t necessarily looked at in other parts of the country. It’s not that they’re not in the code.

It’s just that they’re not scrutinized to the same level of detail that they are here in California. So, if those are the challenges, you need experts who can help solve them. We have to be experts, specifically in the fire code. That’s really the biggest one, and we have to really understand commodity classifications. We have to understand MAQs and hazmat. We have to understand sprinkler protection and the criteria by which we need to protect the commodities. We have to understand clear heights and the top of storage and exit doors. The list goes on and on. And one mistake in those fields of expertise could disqualify a building or could allow a broker or a business operator to choose the wrong building and then have to upgrade it significantly or just simply not be able to do with it what he needs to do in order to maximize the cubic capacity of the building and make it work for his business.”

The challenges are pretty clear. That is, we have to fit what you want to do as a business operator into what the codes and what the state will allow you to do with the building that you want to do it in. I have to dance with all three of those, and we are the glue that brings everybody together that says, okay, business wants to do this, the code allows for this, therefore, city, we’re going to do this, and we’re entitled to do it because we see the entire picture, so having folks who are versed in all those arenas has been a critical component of our success. Having Scott, who’s a high-pile storage analyst and engineer, is absolutely critical. Having Drake, who understands holistically how these projects need to look from fire, electrical, building, and ADA perspectives, is absolutely critical. Having Kim understand how to process all that with the cities and then communicate that back to the client in a way that they can understand a complex issue that they’ve never had to navigate before and don’t feel like they should have to be navigating in a way that is helpful for them to understand and helps them navigate it for their operation so it can be up and running as quickly as possible.”

Storage Solutions 2018 Employee of the Year: Kenny Casey

Our Team

Congratulations!

On behalf of Storage Solutions, we are excited to announce Kenny Casey as the 2018 Employee of the Year!

Kenny is the Warehouse Manager here at Storage Solutions. Within this position, he is responsible for overseeing the operation of our warehouse. This includes everything from being responsible for determining product handling and storage requirements, developing, implementing and evaluating policies and procedures, to inventory management. Kenny has been with the company for 15 years and was recognized for his creative problem-solving abilities. In his free time, you will find him either singing karaoke or cruising around town on his Harley.

All of us at Storage Solutions would like to thank Kenny for his hard work and dedication over the years. We look forward to many more successful years with him as a part of our team!

Thoughts from the office:

“Kenny lights up a room, is honestly funny, and would give the shirt off his back to help you when in need. He works very hard and owns his work. He is always willing to work with you to troubleshoot issues that involve his team & offer advice. It’s apparent that he loves this company, and appreciates my sales role, even when I sometimes make his day more difficult. In the end, he is always willing to help, and knows that the team effort is what drives our success.”

“Kenny is a leader and team player; he is always willing to do whatever it takes to assist with a product, shipping, and guidance. Not only is Kenny a valued employee he is a genuine person who cares about everyone. I’m honored to be his co-worker, teammate, and friend.”

As Our Celebration Closes, Our Family Grows!

Our Team

For the past month, we have talked about our 40th-anniversary celebration in bulk. We mentioned where we have been, where we are now, and where we want to go in the future. As our celebrating comes to a close, we are excited to announce that three of our employees each added one more to the Storage Solutions family.

Congratulations to Heather Hutton, Brandon Pollom, and John Pennington, as well as their own families, on their latest additions!

Heather Hutton and her family welcomed their third child with their newest son, Boston, who was born in the waning hours of June 5th.

Next, we have a couple new fathers in Brandon Pollom and John Pennington. Brandon and his wife welcomed Cecilia on the afternoon of July 10th, making her the second SSI baby this summer.

And finally, John Pennington and his wife welcomed Will into the world just a couple days later on July 12th.

While we praise our employees for their work accomplishments, we are just as happy to celebrate their personal milestones as well. Congratulations to all of you, we couldn’t be more excited!

Want to join the SSI family?

We are always looking for great individuals to add to our SSI family! Click here to submit an application to one of our current openings!

SSI Recognizes Our Winter Sports Coaches!

Our Team

The days are getting shorter, while the nights are getting colder! Winter is coming… As winter rolls in and brings the winter blues, this season’s sports bring the fire! From basketball, volleyball, and cheerleading, here at Storage Solutions, we have some amazing employees who work as coaches as well. With that, we would like to highlight the winter sports coaches by showcasing their dedication!

First up, we have Billy Powers. Billy started his coaching career working with fourth graders while he was still in high school. While attending Wabash College, he played basketball until an injury led him to become a student assistant for his senior year. But this inspired him to continue coaching once he was out of college. He went on to coach at Brebeuf High School for two years and Cathedral High School for one, both in Indianapolis, IN. But once he started his family, he decided to move his coaching skills to seventh and eighth grade at Immaculate Heart of Mary. He’s been there for three years. Billy says, “I love this level because it’s a great balance of fun and competitiveness. Also, it’s less of a time commitment so I can spend more time at home with the girls”.

Next, we have Michelle Coleman. This season will be her 19^th coaching club volleyball! Michelle is the Elite 17-1 Head Coach and Recruiting Coordinator for Team Indiana Volleyball in Indianapolis, IN. Most of the athletes that play for her have the goal of playing volleyball in college, while some play to improve in between school seasons. As the club recruiting coordinator she has helped place over 150 athletes in college and has a 100% placement for her senior class!