Making The Most Of Every Inch

Thomas & Howard Cubes Up

Thomas & Howard is a Columbia, SC-based grocery wholesaler that maintains an enormous inventory of SKUs in its two warehouses. Maintaining an accurate, up-to-date database of information regarding each item is extremely important.

"We're changing over to a new warehouse management system and part of the process of that changeover is making sure that the cubes and weights have to be accurate," says Gary Seiter, Thomas & Howard spokesman.

Seiter will have one of his workers going through both warehouses with an Express Cube portable battery powered scanning system, accessing the products in each slot and using the dimensioning system to obtain the cube and weight on every item in its facilities. He will also be confirming that the UPC codes are correct on each item. This process will have to be repeated for a grand total of 20,000 line items.

When that phase of the project is done, Seiter will set up an automated system for obtaining information on new items that come into both warehouses.

"Through that process, our cubing in our trucks will be correct, because we have an automated program that interfaces with our existing warehouse management system and for each item it takes the weight and cube and tells us how to load our trucks."

The process will also help Thomas & Howard optimize its warehouse space.

"If your cubes and your weights are correct on all of your merchandise," he says, "it allows you to accurately know what size the pallets are and how many groceries are on the pallets you store in the warehouse."

"Everything is more expensive, not only warehouse space, but the cost of vehicles, the fuel to operate vehicles, even the labor," notes Express Cube's Gordon Cooper, director of marketing. "So every bit of space that you can save and maximize, whether in the warehouse or on your trucks, is a direct return on investment that can be shown as a savings." -B.S.