Ceva Freight Management has written a new chapter for its Australian operations by entering into a third-party logistics contract with international book publishing company McGraw Hill.

The contract requires the company to facilitate the management and distribution of educational publications, principally consisting of medical books, to retailers such as Borders and The University Book Coop, as well as directly to schools throughout Australia and New Zealand.

Formally known as Eagle Global Logistics (EGL) and incorporated into the Ceva Logistics Group in July 2007, the company has recently moved from a 3,800 square metre warehouse in Wetherill Park into its new $1 million, 2,800-square metre Banksmeadow distribution centre in New South Wales.

According to national logistics manager Joe Fowler, investment in the right systems has enabled them to become more productive even though the new distribution centre has a smaller floor space.

“Because of this new investment we have become leaner and more efficient. Order picking has significantly improved and is currently meeting a 99.98 percent accuracy rate. We are now able to process a 1,000-line order in 3.5 hours - it used to take previous service providers three days to complete”, he said.

Approximately 13,000 SKU are stored in the distribution centre in a two-tier mezzanine floor shelving system, structured into four picking zones and categorised into ‘infrequent’ to ‘frequent’ picking locations.

Integrated into the two-tier mezzanine storage area is a new conveyor system supplied and installed by Sydney based Australian manufacturer, Adept Conveyor Technologies. The system was specifically manufactured to enable zone picking of book orders with automatic ‘weigh-on-the-fly’ quality checks of completed orders prior to filling, carton sealing and despatching.

The conveyor system’s configuration is structured to feed empty cartons through to four picking zones from Zones 1 & 2 on the top floor down to Zones 3 & 4 on the ground floor, finally ending up at one of four despatch zones on the ground floor.

Before being directed to the picking zones, empty cartons have a pre-printed barcode label applied to the side. Each label has a series of five barcodes, containing information relevant to the customer’s order, weight, picking zone, destination and shipping company data. Once labelled, the cartons are then introduced into Zone 1 for picking, or are placed onto the main transit conveyor for delivery to 1 of 3 other alternate zones or directly onto the dispatch area.

Each transfer zone has a dedicated barcode scanner positioned to read specific information in order to direct the cartons to the appropriate zone for picking. All cartons are directed via the transit conveyor, through all four zones for further picking, or to bypass individual zones if titles located there are not required. Completed orders are marshalled at a single gate position before being called through for check weighing and void filling processes.

As cartons are called through either automatically or by operator push button activation, they pass over the Garven check-weigher to be scanned and instantly cross checked with the weight data recorded on the bar code. Cartons showing a significant weight variance will be rejected.

Rated to process five cartons per minute at peak periods, the Adept System has been recorded to have achieved a rating of up to 20 cartons per minute when operating at full capacity. The warehouse management system (WMS), currently in operation, was designed to facilitate the picking and despatch process of book orders based on a specification whose intellectual property (IP) is owned by McGraw Hill, and tailor-made to suit a specification for publishing companies in the Asia Pacific region linked back to its Singapore hub. The system is integrated into McGraw Hills’ enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and provides real-time visibility of stockholding and order status.

For more information call (02) 9771 4655, email sales@adeptconveyor.com.au or visit www.adeptconveyor.com.au.

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