Mezzanines - A Big Part of Automobile Dealership Parts Rooms

Expanding Parts Room Capacity a Reality for All Dealerships
It may surprise you that the least glitzy part of an automobile dealership is the most profitable. Look past the new car showroom, the lot with hundreds of vehicles with high gloss finishes, or even the finance department. Next time you visit your neighborhood automobile dealership, spend a few minutes looking at their parts room. Dealers have known for years that this department, the parts room, is their cash cow.

Linked closely with the service department, the parts room is integral to the dealership’s long-term profitability plans. As dealer principal’s plan for an expansion or renovation, their parts room layout looms important.

Mezzanines have long since been a viable method of expanding the capacity of a building. Dealerships are now looking at mezzanines as another option to a constructed work platform. Steel mezzanines are gaining acceptability due to these factors.

• Cost savings. Although not a guarantee, many times the cost of a steel mezzanine is less than that of a constructed concrete option.


• Flexibility. Especially if the mezzanine is being retrofitted into an existing location, a steel structure can be installed with much greater ease.


• Ease of modification. Making changes to a steel mezzanine like adding different storage shelving, perhaps a modular office space, or even an additional level can, if planned from the outset, be much simpler and less costly than if the mezzanine is part of a permanent structure.

For the past 75 years Morrison Company has led the way as the material handling industry has evolved. After hundreds of projects, the Morrison Company sales and engineering team is eager to take on your unique challenges. To set up an evaluation of your facility, select facility assessment.

You Do That? - In-House Project Management

Its All About Focus
Multi-tasking is part of everyone’s day. Successful people have learned to juggle many tasks while keeping focused on a main goal. Although this approach works well within an organization, most clients don’t want to shut down an operation just to have one of their managers coordinate the installation of their integrated material handling solution.

What is interesting about project management is that most people know how to do it. Offering project management as part of an overall service bundle is not an affront to anyone’s intelligence. Rather it is an acknowledgement that when you were hired, your organization determined your talents were best focused on helping them to be more successful. They hired you because you are a professional able to accomplish a specific set of tasks.

Once you decide on an integrated material handling solution as part of your future plans, the role of ordering, scheduling, and installing the components should be the responsibility of a professional who has gained superior expertise performing those specific tasks.

The project management function at Morrison Company is taken very seriously. In almost every case, our clients want to maintain their focus on their business. Communication is critical. As soon as your project is underway, a complex set of tasks are distributed to all participants detailing their role in accomplishing the project.

Breaking the communication elements down into categories helps to gain an understanding of what activities are accomplished by the project director. At each stage: planning, executing, controlling and closing, your project director will be actively focused on these services:

• Integration Management


• Scope Management


• Time Management


• Cost Management


• Quality Management


• Human Resource Management


• Risk Management


• Procurement Management

Contact Morrison Company for an assessment of your material handling needs.

Test Your Knowledge

Prospecting for Business
Like most things in life, the big things are simple to understand, but not easy to execute. Take dieting for example. Ask most people if weighing less would improve their quality of life and chances are the answer would be yes. Ask the same people if they have been successful in dieting and you’ll get an entirely different response. The concept is simple, but painful to maintain.

Ask any sales person about how valuable prospecting is regarding their long term success. Ask those same sales people how many are successful at prospecting on a regular basis. The gap between intent and practice can be huge. Let’s look at the dieting example to illustrate the point. Go into any health club in January and the parking lot will be jammed. Visit it again by February and the amount of parking options will increase exponentially.

Prospecting is simple, but painful to maintain on an ongoing basis. Hearing a significant level of “no’s” can be extremely deflating. Expressed as a “numbers game”; prospecting simply means asking a series of qualifying questions to a group of likely suspects. The conclusion of this effort will be a smaller set of prospects likely to purchase your product. Although every sales person intuitively understands this “game”, few want to endure the pain of producing the “numbers.”

Tele-prospecting has become an integral component of a sales organization’s strategy. The justification is simple. In order to produce the number of sales in a given year, a requisite number of prospects are needed. Using the telephone to prospect for qualified buyers has become a “must”. Most companies use one of two methods, an internal prospecting team or an outsourced solution.

Every organization’s circumstances and markets are different so there is no hard rule to guide the decision of whether to prospect internally or externally. The American Teleservices Association can be an excellent resource to locate an outsourced telesales supplier. Visiting their website at www.ataconntect.org will address any questions you may have about beginning or improving your telephone prospecting efforts.

Contemplating Using Used Rack?

Long-term Headaches Abound
Although it may be initially less expensive to purchase used racks, there are several issues that should be considered before such a purchase is made. Condition and previous stress on the steel can make a difference on the long-term viability of the storage structure you’ll live with.

Used racks may not be in good condition. The supply of used racks is not regulated. Dealers acquiring and reselling used racks are not bound to any design constraints. It is assumed that the end user understands how to safely and efficiently design a storage solution.

The capacity of the racks may not be known or may not be correctly represented by the seller of the racks. Depending on the circumstance of where the racks originated, the seller may not be aware or want to disclose the condition of the racks. Even if the capacity is correctly labeled, the true capacity may be less do to damage caused by misuse, heat or weather.

The provider of used racks may offer no warranty and may not be well-informed regarding the safe use of the racks. The provider may not have an engineer available who can answer technical issues regarding the racks or has familiarity with the RMI (Rack Manufacturers Institute) Specification and its requirements.

The provider may not have the necessary installation instructions for the racks being offered for sale or may not have the necessary parts needed during installation or in the future. Still other providers use component parts from different manufacturers creating a hybrid system of which no one rack supplier will take responsibility.

Those who market used racks often sell the components without informing the buyer that there may be seismic design requirements for the site and that a building permit may be required. The buyer can end up in a desperate situation during installation or after the rack is installed. This can result in costly delays, and the rack may have to be modified to meet the code.

Morrison Company has developed a white paper detailing the cautions many people overlook when considering using used rack for their project. To request a copy of this updated important news, select new information on used rack. Please indicate "Used Rack White Paper" in the area of interest.

Catalog and Retail Giant Increases Capacity

Case Study - Morrison Used to Expand DC Operations
Even prior to Sears purchasing this company, their reputation in the catalog industry was one of high efficiency. Since the purchase, Sears uses the expertise of this company to improve its distribution strategies. Two or their four locations needed expansion to meet the increased demand. These two projects were undertaken while the distribution centers were in full-time operation.

The scope of first project was to design and install a decked rack storage system for a 200,000 square foot addition to an existing facility. This storage and retrieval system was to be used to store corrugated cartons of reserve product.

The second project was to design and install staging flow rack for a 50,000 square foot building addition to their campus of distribution centers. Included in the second project was the dismantling of and moving the existing rack to the new location.

Both projects tested the expertise of the engineering and project management services of Morrison Company. Since the justification for the projects included expansion of existing facilities, it was imperative the work be accomplished at the same time ongoing storage and retrieval operations were in place.

Working with the client’s on-site management team, Morrison Company engineers devised a plan to dismantle existing racking without endangering the workers or their picking throughput. This was accomplished by simultaneously erecting the new storage locations and shifting merchandise. Maintaining a tight communication process enabled the client’s warehouse management picking software to be updated.

Installation crews were scheduled around peak picking times to allow for a safe job site, and efficient assembly of the racking components. This process repeated itself over a six week cycle culminating in an on time project completion.

For more information on this project or examples of other case studies, refer to the Morrison company website case study page.

OSHA Gets Tough on Lifting Injuries

Time to Update Your Safety Programs
Manual material handling injuries are the single largest contributor to higher workers' compensation claims and premiums in the U.S. OSHA has known of these facts but lacked the enforcement mechanism. Things have changed. Now OSHA and industry associations are providing information to warehouse managers and to third-party logistics (3PL) owners.

The IWLA (International Warehouse and Logistics Association) and OSHA have formed a joint industry task force to create a publication called Ergonomic Guidelines for Manual Material Handling. It covers ergonomics across all industry, not just in warehousing and distribution facilities.

These guidelines were developed by a team from the California OSHA along with people from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the St. Paul Insurance companies and finally the Material Handling Industry of America (MHIA).

Other states are publishing guidelines. Ohio State University and the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation have developed a set to lifting guidelines designed to minimize the risk of lifting tasks to workers returning from an injury. The program enables a warehouse manager to use criteria like the weight of objects to be moved; whether the employee is healthy or has an existing lower-back disorder; the maximum horizontal reach distance; the vertical lift origin from the floor for each lift; and how much twisting is involved.

This tool identifies conditions as low, medium or high risk. While many managers are more aware of ergonomics than ever before, there is still much to be learned about the impact of factory and DC jobs on workers’ backs.

If you would like a copy of the ergonomic lift guide for your operation, you can request a copy at the Morrison Company website. At the contact us page, indicate “lifting guide” in the area of interest.

© 2003 Morrison Company. All Rights Reserved.