Project Spotlight: Using Our Network, Experience to Expedite Installation
One of our 3PL partners recently requested our help to design, acquire and install a new pallet racking system for their two new facilities in Nevada. The company itself is relatively young compared to others in the 3PL space and was looking for a long-term partner to help them grow.
The timeline was short; we needed to find a solution with material on the ground ready for installation within 6 weeks. With lead times stretching to 14 weeks at the time, we knew this would be a challenge. The facilities were also located in high seismic areas. With the height and capacity requirements, we knew utilizing pre-owned equipment to expedite delivery would be limited; an engineered solution was the only appropriate answer.
We exhausted our common tactics in this situation – leaning on partnerships, dedicated freight allocations, and compatible preowned equipment – and took a step back to collaborate and develop a creative solution. After our Kansas City team put their heads together and discussed the challenges ahead, they established a strategy to combat the many obstacles the tight timeline presented.
There were many impactful decisions our team made that contributed to the success of the project. Our project management team developed a phased installation plan that would allow us to maximize efficiency through installation. To do so, we needed a detailed fabrication program to ship specific materials in a sequence for each installation phase to eliminate any delays. For that to work, we needed to collaborate with the manufactures plant management team, and through planning, we were able to maximize their ability to produce and ship material much faster than anticipated.
With the surge in production, we had to develop an efficient plan to expedite the finished product from the multiple ship points to the job site. We collaborated with our internal logistics team to create a schedule that would leverage our relationships and ability to self-broker freight with the plant’s higher manufacturing capacity and outbound abilities. This allowed us to bring material in quicker than typical and allowed us to maximize our labor resources to execute our installation plan.
Due to the volume of material being delivered each day, we needed to establish a well-planned process to move material upon delivery to the multiple installation crews dedicated to each project. Our installation management team was able to allocate additional resources to accelerate delivery from the inbound trucks to the multiple phases without impacting the cost of the project.
Because of the phased approach, we anticipated some challenges with turning over the project as needed to the operations team. We collaborated with the local municipality and developed a process that would allow for us to inspect and sign off each phase of the project as it was completed allowing the client’s operations team to expedite fulfillment.
Through great collaboration, communication, and effort, our team and partners could develop and execute a strategy to deliver an expedited & economical solution for our client.
Scope of Work Included:
- 50,000 + pallet positions
- Logistics Management
- Project Design
- Engineering & Permit Facilitation
- Installation
- Project Management
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