Industry in Turmoil Seeks Stability

Retail Drug Industry Counts on Morrison Company
CVS and Walgreens continue to battle for bragging rights of who is the top retail drug store chain. Walmart has announced it’s intention to enter the lucrative retail drug market.

While the industry waits to see the shake out, it’s business as usual for these retail drug leaders. Over the past 20 years, Morrison Company has completed projects for over 30 distribution centers for Walgreens, CVS, Discount Drug Mart, and Bindley Western (now known as Cardinal Drug). Additionally, six facilities are being completed for the giant drug wholesaler AmerisourceBergen. Why have so many heavily regulated firms with complex product lines turned to Morrison Company? Discover why?

Even before the first truckloads of material arrive at the client facility, Morrison Company’s design engineers verified that their design has the necessary approvals from local building inspectors. Their engineered design has been the culmination of effort from a support cast of engineers from the multitude of suppliers and the clients’ facility planning firm.

Although each project is unique, all of them required the integration of many material-handling solutions using pallet rack, flow systems, mezzanines, shelving, and conveyor support systems. “With the average size of a Walgreens’ facility of 750,000 square foot, each project feels like we’re building a city,” indicates Jim Green – President of Morrison Company. What makes these projects significant is the coordination between the client, their building contractor, the design engineering team and the project management staff at Morrison Company. “A project of this scale will require our involvement for over one year, ordering, scheduling and installing material from over 150 complete truckloads,” said Mr. Green.

Whether for clients like Walgreens or CVS, managing the details is no small task. The AmeriSourceBergen projects have their own challenges. Each facility contains 250,000 square foot of highly regulated material. Morrison Company not only works to insure the material is erected on schedule but they must await the evaluation of FDA inspectors. The typical AmeriSourceBergen engagement is six months.

Ensuring the flow of material into the facility from day to day is the role of the Site Manager and the project management team. A choreographed ballet adequately describes the effort put forth by the project management team. Team participants include: Morrison Company design engineers, site manager, and installation crews; factory representatives, local building inspectors, general contractors, and the client’s project manager.

Do your plans include the expansion, consolidation or a new distribution center? Ask for details of how Morrison Company's integrated material handling solutions can positively impact your logistics goals.

You Do That?

In-house Design Engineering
According to MHEDA (Material Handling Equipment Distributors Association) there are 400 companies that offer material handling solutions. Although this number may seem high, most do not offer engineering advice. Why is that important?

Think about your last visit to the doctor. What if that meeting was to gain the answer to a troubling pain? Even with healthcare insurance you would have been expected to pay for the knowledge and experience of a professional who had seen similar cases. You probably decided to just stay at home and looked online for a generic answer? Right?

Working with a supplier of material handling equipment that doesn’t have an experienced engineering department makes about the same sense. Looking online and shopping for what appears to be the right solution may save money in the short term, but your long-term prognosis may be grim.

Morrison Company’s engineering team, armed with 35 years of material handling expertise, routinely helps clients think through choices, deciphers government regulations (building codes), presents options that will work when things get shaky (seismic zone design expertise), and prescribes a care plan that will work for their unique circumstances (their integrated material handling solution).

Additionally, just as your family physician must maintain knowledge of current medical trends, Morrison Company engineers are required to actively read and test various products and means to deliver safe and effective material handling solutions.

The commitment to an in-house expertise is the right thing to do for clients. Most material handling distributors rely on their suppliers engineering capability to identify whether the client’s unique need can be met with their product. The flaw using this practice is in the skill set of the engineer. Manufacturers hire engineers to design products not to design an integrated solution using several products.

Additionally, the manufacturing engineers are not tasked to maintain relationships with their end users, meaning as circumstances change in your operation, there will be no engineering advocate to give appropriate advice.

Contact Morrison Company for an assessment of your material handling needs. In-house engineering expertise is provided at no charge and through the guidance of the sales team will develop the right solution to meet your unique material handling needs.

Test Your Knowledge

Tips on Warehouse Safety
Safety starts with you." This shopworn slogan often serves as the focal point for warehouse safety programs. Safety consultant and former OSHA manager Rick Kaletsky, however, begs to differ.

"While that's a good catch phrase, I have to respectfully disagree," Kaletsky says. "Safety can't start with the employee—the employer has to set the table first. They have to establish a training program, culture, and environment where employees can work safely."

Unfortunately, employers often fail to put that kind of effort into promoting safety. For some, it's a matter of insufficient time or resources. Others cut corners to save money. In the long run, though, creating a safe environment saves money by minimizing absenteeism, workplace disruptions, and equipment downtime while increasing productivity and employee satisfaction. And it doesn't necessarily mean spending a fortune. Here's a sampling of common-sense—and cost-effective—safety tips.

Practice "Ergonomics 101." Given the amount of manual labor that occurs in a warehouse, it's no surprise that OSHA, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, has identified ergonomic injuries as one of the most common hazards for warehouse employees. "In terms of severity, ergonomic injuries are the most expensive and have the longest recovery time.

One of the simplest steps a warehouse operator can take is to continually preach and practice the principles of safe lifting. That means workers need to keep their backs straight, keep loads close to their bodies, and not lift, pull, or push anything over their shoulders, Kaletsky advises. Nor should they turn their upper torsos without also turning their lower torsos by moving their legs and feet, he adds.

Pay attention to near misses. Kaletsky recommends paying attention not just to accidents that cause injuries or illnesses but also to the "near misses." That will help identify safety trends or property damage that could lead to injury in the future.

Currier maintains that tracking only OSHA "recordables" or lost-time injuries won't provide a complete picture of workplace accidents. For example, he estimates that 7–10 percent of all injuries involve the eye, yet most of them are not severe and don't result in lost time or an OSHA report.

Exercise constant vigilance. Experts recommend conducting weekly or monthly safety inspections of the facility and of how employees are doing their jobs. Kaletsky takes this one step further. "You need to be continually monitoring what is going on in your facility," he suggests. "This doesn't have to be a formal system with columns, boxes, and guys' names. This is just keeping an eye on what is happening on the floor." His response to managers who say they don't have time to do that: "Well, you have time to stop and watch how some guy's lifting. You have time to make sure that access to exits and fire extinguishers is not blocked. It doesn't take that much time."

Interested in picking up the complete list of safety tips? Request safety first on the Morrison Company “Contact Us" page.

Connecting Call Centers to Distribution Centers

The Impact of VOIP and ACD
You’re looking at this article and saying to yourself, what do call centers have to do with material handling? Well, almost every department, including shipping and receiving, order processing, and logistics generate customer data. Your customer service and sales teams rely on this information to fulfill client requests or anticipate a problem. New technology will make it less costly to gather, manage and provide pertinent information to whoever is fielding client calls. New technology will enable better decision making ultimately improving company productivity.

Much of what we think of client interaction occurs at a call center. Whether housed at your facility, or outsourced to a provider, many types of customer queries are fielded there. Two nationally known consulting companies have weighed in on the future of call centers. Chris Selland from Boston-based Aberdeen Group says, “Over the next five years VOIP will allow contact centers to “virtually” handle incoming and outgoing calls.”

What is VOIP? Voice over IP describes the technology in taking voice communication, packaging it via Internet Protocol – much like packages on a conveyor belt and transmitting it over private or public networks. VOIP allows for voice data to be transmitted over Internet lines without the constraint of using separate telephone lines.

The second reason why call centers may not be a physical “center” is the advent of new call process software. Seema Lall of Frost &Sullivan indicates, “The newer generations of ACD (automatic call distribution) do a much better job of integrating multiple contact channels. One channel may carry voice and the other e-mail.” The impact of this change will make it easier to gather information from desperate sources and provide it to call center agents.

ACD software will soon be able to gather and organize all types of data about the transactional life of a customer. ACD software will interface with company databases enabling information to be matched with other transactional data. Managers will have better information, make better decisions and customers are better served.

VOIP will create an environment in which location is no longer important. Call center agents don’t have to be located at a facility. The Internet will allow both voice and data to be sent and received making the agent more productive. Call center managers see cost savings in lower operating costs and drastically lower phone bills.

How can VOIP help your business? Are there elements that could be applied to lower costs, improve productivity and increase profitability?

Conveying Success at Retail DC

Personalized Attention Pays Off
This leading retailer of personalized gifts has experienced growth in demand for its unique products. With the guidance of their facility planning consultant, they turned to Morrison Company to provide personalized attention to their custom monogramming work stations.

The challenge was to expand the capacity of this exacting work group. Located in their distribution center, this work group receives the product from a general storage area. Highly precision machines etch or monogram personalized information on the high end merchandise. Once completed, the product is moved to the packaging and then on to shipping department.

Working within the overall design provided by the facility planning consultant, Morrison Company’s solution was to provide over 600 feet of package conveyor nestled around and through the monogramming work stations. The work stations were modified to accommodate the new work flow along with new guide rails to protect employees from unanticipated contact with the moving conveyor.

Powered by a unique conveyor controls system, packages are placed on the roller bed by an employee. The system detects the proper location and routes the container to the existing transportation conveyor system.

Unique to this project was the client’s expectation regarding implementation. With the holiday buying season looming, downtime was not an option. Working with the client’s operations team, Morrison Company engineers and installation team worked during off hours to ensure a quick trouble-free installation.

Does your operation include a conveyor system? Expanding an existing area or installing a new system is part of the ongoing services provided by Morrison Company, a top material handling equipment distributor in the US.

Contact Us for a no-obligation facility assessment of your warehouse storage or conveying needs.

Ergonomics and Back Safety

Cross Functional Fact Sheet Available
Universities have taken a leadership role in understanding the causes of work-related injuries. The study of Ergonomics began in several top higher education institutions, including at the University of Maryland. Ergonomics is a multi-disciplinary science which emphasizes the importance of designing workstations (i.e. office furniture or industrial work areas and equipment) to fit the individual worker. The objective is to "design out" as many ergonomic hazards as possible in an effort to reduce cumulative trauma disorders.

Working in conjunction with the federal government, the University of Maryland developed a comprehensive program to both educate and demonstrate the effective use of what we take for granted; our back.

Regulations specific to ergonomics do not currently exist. OSHA's approach to address ergonomic related injuries occurring in America's workplaces is covered under the General Duty Clause.

The General Duty Clause describes the employer's obligation to "furnish to each of his employees employment and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to his employees." This clause from the OSH Act is utilized to cite serious hazards where no specific OSHA standard exists to address the hazard, as is the case with ergonomic stressors.

When OSHA uses the General Duty Clause to cite an employer, OSHA must demonstrate that: the employer failed to keep the workplace free of a hazard to which employees were exposed, the hazard was causing or likely to cause death or serious physical harm, the hazard was recognized, and a feasible means of abatement for that hazard exists.

OSHA has a four-pronged comprehensive approach to ergonomics designed to quickly and effectively address musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) in the workplace. The four segments of OSHA's strategy for reducing injuries and illnesses from MSDs in the workplace are: Guidelines (develop task-specific), enforcement under (General Duty Clause), outreach and assistance and National Advisory Committee (identify gaps in research to the application of ergonomics and ergonomic principles in the workplace).

The University of Maryland has developed a series of fact sheets designed for employers to both build awareness and provide material to create back-friendly workplace policies and procedures. These fact sheets are accessible on their website at http://www.des.umd.edu/compliance/factsheet/index.html.