Mouser Electronics Distribution Meets Demanding Growth, Pumps up Quality
“We were doing 1,750 shipments. Now, it's 5,000.”
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Customer:
Mouser Electronics, www.mouser.com
Mouser Electronics is one of the largest supplier-authorized
catalog distributors of
electronic components in North America. The company provides
engineers and buyers of electronic components the best possible
service, regardless of the size of the customer or the size of
the order.
Mouser’s product line includes Semiconductors, Passives,
Interconnects, Electromechanical, Power Sources, and Specialty
Products. From its state of the art warehouse, Mouser
Electronics ships most orders the
same day they are received—many orders are shipped in as little
as 15 minutes.
Mouser is a wholly owned subsidiary of TTI, Inc., one of the
largest global distributors of Passive and Interconnect
components. (A performance report on
TTI’s innovative distribution center can also be found on
this website.)
Application:
Distribution Center Conveyor System & Shipping Area Upgrades.
The Situation:
In a climate that has seen many of its competitors decline 40%, Mouser has grown 25% since 2000.
“In the electronics business, the products definitely change,”
said Mouser President Glenn Smith. “Our customers understand
that they have to add new products to grow. We have suppliers
who get 30% or more of their sales just from new products. That
new stuff gets designed by engineers…and our customers are
engineers.”
In its Mansfield, Texas distribution center, Mouser elected to
utilize material handling to sustain excellent customer service.
Mouser stocks over 104,000 sku’s in the facility, with constant
growth in the variety of inventory items. Mouser utilizes a
single ten-hour shift.
Mouser moved from a smaller facility into its new 170,000 square
foot DC in 2002. The new facility came together with equipment
from the old building. “We had a takeaway line of conveyor that
was loud, old and used,” said Pete Shopp, Operations Director.
“It was minimum pressure accumulation, not zero pressure. It
also had pass through gates people had to mess with to cross the
conveyor line. We had tubs dump over on that conveyor. It just
didn’t accumulate right.”
During peak times, the shipping area became congested. Mouser
utilized carts and baskets in its shipping area. Said Shopp:
“When we were throwing everything into carts or baskets, we were
making mistakes. We found out that some things would get put
into a cart and hauled off without getting processed. Or they
were thrown into the wrong cart. It was congested—we couldn’t
get stuff in and out of there.”
Foot traffic in and out of the shipping area was constant due to
employees needing to leave their workstations to get shipping
cartons or other supplies. “It caused a disruption in the flow
of work,” said Shopp. “It wasn’t efficient to have people stop
picking orders to chase boxes down.”
“The biggest factor that told us we needed more automation was
the increase in orders and lines—25% more orders and 35% more
inventory,” said Smith. “Just last week, we added over a
thousand brand new customers—we’d never heard of them before.
With that increase, we knew we had to do something.”
The
Desired Solution
Mouser focuses like a laser on satisfying its customer base.
That means shipping orders faster than anyone else in the
business and making sure those orders are correct. The company
zeroed in on meeting its promised ship dates when it decided to
automate its distribution center. Its customers swear by
Mouser’s service, but the company knew it would have to create
more efficiency in its warehouse to handle the increasing order
volume and ramped-up demand. It had to stock a larger variety of
products and still be able to ship them effectively and quickly.
(Right: Mouser President Glenn Smith, standing near the
shipping department in Mouser's upgraded new facility).
Any solution had to reduce walk time for employees by making
sure they could spend all their time picking and packing orders
and not pushing carts, replenishing cartons, or other shipping
supplies for their workstations. Mouser also wanted to increase
the amount of usable workspace for each employee, as conditions
could get cramped and difficult during high-volume shifts.
A significant goal was the ability to change the way it picked
orders in the future. Mouser intends to switch from pulling by
lines instead of by orders and utilizing its conveyor system.
“We are going to make a major change to the way we operate in
the future,” said Shopp, “and our current system must to tie
into that.” Currently, orders are picked into totes and conveyed
to the shipping area. In the future, totes will disappear from
the process.
“We designed the system with the idea that it was eventually
going to be a line consolidation arrangement instead of a tote
arrangement,” Shopp elaborated, “where bagged items travel on
the conveyor rather than inside totes. Line items of orders will
be placed on the conveyor rather than completed orders. Line
items will then be consolidated in packing and shipping.”
(Continued)
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