By installing new dock door seals and ceiling fans in the shipping area, MillerCoors made its docks more comfortable for employees—and slashed its energy bills in the process.
Peter Bradley is an award-winning career journalist with more than three decades of experience in both newspapers and national business magazines. His credentials include seven years as the transportation and supply chain editor at Purchasing Magazine and six years as the chief editor of Logistics Management.
Like many other American companies, MillerCoors has made a long-term commitment to environmental sustainability. Its broad goals include conserving water, reducing waste, and saving energy. But meeting those goals can create enormous challenges for a company like MillerCoors whose industrial facilities were built back when energy was cheap.
The company, which started producing its Miller brand in Milwaukee in 1855, uses a lot of water, packaging, and energy. Its Milwaukee brewery alone produces 9 to 10 billion barrels of beer each year, at a complex that includes 78 buildings scattered across 84 acres. "We're an old facility, with lots of entrances and exits and old docks," says Bob Kutney, the supply chain manager for the Milwaukee brewery.
Even so, he says, the company has made substantial progress in its sustainability initiatives. "We start every day in the brewery with a pre-ship meeting, where we cover safety first, people, quality, service, cost, and [environmental] responsibility. Responsibility is all about sustainability and what we're doing to reduce our reliance on natural gas, electricity, and especially water." While much of the effort revolves around manufacturing operations, the company has taken specific steps to reduce energy use in the plant's shipping center—and to improve employee comfort and safety at the same time.
The doors are always open
One example of the brewery's efforts to cut energy consumption can be seen at its shipping center, which occupies about 100,000 square feet of space and serves some 130 distributors throughout the Midwest. The brewery has 101 shipping and receiving docks, but the 28 docks devoted to shipping are the most active. Forklift operators load full pallets on some 240 trucks per day in a three-shift operation. That number climbs to 300 during the peak shipping season from March to August.
That means those doors are open a large part of the time, and open doors invite in cold air in the winter, hot air in the summer, and snow or rain whenever they occur.
Over the past two years, the shipping area has substantially reduced its energy use and heating costs as the result of a switch from natural gas heating to steam as well as two investments at and around the dock doors.
Kutney says the dock door project arose out of a push to improve dock safety. He says a conversation about dock locks and safety with dock equipment specialist Rite-Hite led to a discussion about ways to seal dock doors in order to reduce energy use.
The effort had two major parts: one directly addressing the dock doors, the second using fans to recapture heated air from the ceiling.
At the doors, the goal was to create tight seals to prevent energy loss while the doors were in use. To achieve that, Kutney selected a group of complementary dock shelters and dock leveler pit seals from Rite-Hite.
A major source of heat loss at dock doors is the gapping that occurs between a trailer's swing-out doors and the trailer sides when the doors are open. According to Rite-Hite, the two-inch gaps along the hinges equate to a two-and-a-half-foot hole in the wall. That allows a lot of cold air to enter and warm air to escape in Milwaukee's often-frigid winters.
MillerCoors replaced its existing dock seals with a dock shelter called the Eliminator-GapMaster II from Rite-Hite's Frommelt line of products. The soft-sided shelter features polyethylene hooks on its side curtains that seal those trailer door hinge gaps when a trailer is backed into position. At the same time, it creates a seal around the trailer tops and sides without impeding lift trucks' access to the trailer.
Another source of energy loss at MillerCoors' docks was through the steel decks of the dock levelers. To seal those areas, MillerCoors installed PitMaster Under-leveler Seal components, also a Frommelt product. Rite-Hite says the product seals gaps where the leveler, trailer, and dock shelter meet—essentially the fourth side of the door opening. It also creates a pocket of air beneath the leveler, which acts as an insulating barrier to reduce heat transfer through the leveler deck.
MillerCoors also installed weather seals to close off gaps between the sides of the leveler and the pit walls.
Fans bring down the heat
In addition to plugging leaks at the docks, Kutney asked Rite-Hite to address an issue common to distribution centers in areas with cold winters: heated air rising to the ceiling. Rite-Hite says that air temperature in a typical DC will be one-half to 1 degree F warmer for every foot in height when air is not circulated. That drives up heating costs as heating systems struggle to warm air at floor level. Kutney says the temperature at the ceiling level in the shipping area was as much as 20 degrees warmer than at floor level.
MillerCoors installed three 24-foot high-volume, low-speed (HVLS) fans from Rite-Hite in the dock staging area. Rite-Hite says the fans work by forcing warm air down toward the floor, where it mixes with cooler air and eventually rises again, only to be pushed down once more in a process called destratification.
According to Rite-Hite, the shipping center saw its natural gas costs drop by $70,000 in the first 18 months after the installation of the seals and fans. Although costs have continued to decline, Kutney notes that the company has since replaced its overhead gas-powered dock heaters with more efficient heaters powered by steam, so it's difficult to say how much of further savings can be attributed to the seals and fans alone. Nonetheless, he says he's confident that MillerCoors recovered its investment within two years, a full year sooner than anticipated.
Furthermore, the seals and fans have created a much more comfortable environment for workers, he says. The docks are warmer in the winter, and the fans provide some cooling in the summer.
In addition, he says, the seals keep the dock area dry during wet weather, making operations safer.
All in all, Kutney says he's pleased with both the savings and the improvements in the work environment from the investment. "It's paid off in a lot of ways," he says.
Supply chain planning (SCP) leaders working on transformation efforts are focused on two major high-impact technology trends, including composite AI and supply chain data governance, according to a study from Gartner, Inc.
"SCP leaders are in the process of developing transformation roadmaps that will prioritize delivering on advanced decision intelligence and automated decision making," Eva Dawkins, Director Analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain practice, said in a release. "Composite AI, which is the combined application of different AI techniques to improve learning efficiency, will drive the optimization and automation of many planning activities at scale, while supply chain data governance is the foundational key for digital transformation.”
Their pursuit of those roadmaps is often complicated by frequent disruptions and the rapid pace of technological innovation. But Gartner says those leaders can accelerate the realized value of technology investments by facilitating a shift from IT-led to business-led digital leadership, with SCP leaders taking ownership of multidisciplinary teams to advance business operations, channels and products.
“A sound data governance strategy supports advanced technologies, such as composite AI, while also facilitating collaboration throughout the supply chain technology ecosystem,” said Dawkins. “Without attention to data governance, SCP leaders will likely struggle to achieve their expected ROI on key technology investments.”
The British logistics robot vendor Dexory this week said it has raised $80 million in venture funding to support an expansion of its artificial intelligence (AI) powered features, grow its global team, and accelerate the deployment of its autonomous robots.
A “significant focus” continues to be on expanding across the U.S. market, where Dexory is live with customers in seven states and last month opened a U.S. headquarters in Nashville. The Series B will also enhance development and production facilities at its UK headquarters, the firm said.
The “series B” funding round was led by DTCP, with participation from Latitude Ventures, Wave-X and Bootstrap Europe, along with existing investors Atomico, Lakestar, Capnamic, and several angels from the logistics industry. With the close of the round, Dexory has now raised $120 million over the past three years.
Dexory says its product, DexoryView, provides real-time visibility across warehouses of any size through its autonomous mobile robots and AI. The rolling bots use sensor and image data and continuous data collection to perform rapid warehouse scans and create digital twins of warehouse spaces, allowing for optimized performance and future scenario simulations.
Originally announced in September, the move will allow Deutsche Bahn to “fully focus on restructuring the rail infrastructure in Germany and providing climate-friendly passenger and freight transport operations in Germany and Europe,” Werner Gatzer, Chairman of the DB Supervisory Board, said in a release.
For its purchase price, DSV gains an organization with around 72,700 employees at over 1,850 locations. The new owner says it plans to investment around one billion euros in coming years to promote additional growth in German operations. Together, DSV and Schenker will have a combined workforce of approximately 147,000 employees in more than 90 countries, earning pro forma revenue of approximately $43.3 billion (based on 2023 numbers), DSV said.
After removing that unit, Deutsche Bahn retains its core business called the “Systemverbund Bahn,” which includes passenger transport activities in Germany, rail freight activities, operational service units, and railroad infrastructure companies. The DB Group, headquartered in Berlin, employs around 340,000 people.
“We have set clear goals to structurally modernize Deutsche Bahn in the areas of infrastructure, operations and profitability and focus on the core business. The proceeds from the sale will significantly reduce DB’s debt and thus make an important contribution to the financial stability of the DB Group. At the same time, DB Schenker will gain a strong strategic owner in DSV,” Deutsche Bahn CEO Richard Lutz said in a release.
Transportation industry veteran Anne Reinke will become president & CEO of trade group the Intermodal Association of North America (IANA) at the end of the year, stepping into the position from her previous post leading third party logistics (3PL) trade group the Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA), both organizations said today.
Meanwhile, TIA today announced that insider Christopher Burroughs would fill Reinke’s shoes as president & CEO. Burroughs has been with TIA for 13 years, most recently as its vice president of Government Affairs for the past six years, during which time he oversaw all legislative and regulatory efforts before Congress and the federal agencies.
Before her four years leading TIA, Reinke spent two years as Deputy Assistant Secretary with the U.S. Department of Transportation and 16 years with CSX Corporation.
Serious inland flooding and widespread power outages are likely to sweep across Florida and other Southeast states in coming days with the arrival of Hurricane Helene, which is now predicted to make landfall Thursday evening along Florida’s northwest coast as a major hurricane, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
While the most catastrophic landfall impact is expected in the sparsely-population Big Bend area of Florida, it’s not only sea-front cities that are at risk. Since Helene is an “unusually large storm,” its flooding, rainfall, and high winds won’t be limited only to the Gulf Coast, but are expected to travel hundreds of miles inland, the weather service said. Heavy rainfall is expected to begin in the region even before the storm comes ashore, and the wet conditions will continue to move northward into the southern Appalachians region through Friday, dumping storm total rainfall amounts of up to 18 inches. Specifically, the major flood risk includes the urban areas around Tallahassee, metro Atlanta, and western North Carolina.
In addition to its human toll, the storm could exert serious business impacts, according to the supply chain mapping and monitoring firm Resilinc. Those will be largely triggered by significant flooding, which could halt oil operations, force mandatory evacuations, restrict ports, and disrupt air traffic.
While the storm’s track is currently forecast to miss the critical ports of Miami and New Orleans, it could still hurt operations throughout the Southeast agricultural belt, which produces products like soybeans, cotton, peanuts, corn, and tobacco, according to Everstream Analytics.
That widespread footprint could also hinder supply chain and logistics flows along stretches of interstate highways I-10 and I-75 and on regional rail lines operated by Norfolk Southern and CSX. And Hurricane Helene could also likely impact business operations by unleashing power outages, deep flooding, and wind damage in northern Florida portions of Georgia, Everstream Analytics said.
Before the storm had even touched Florida soil, recovery efforts were already being launched by humanitarian aid group the American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN). In a statement on Wednesday, the group said it is urging residents in the storm's path across the Southeast to heed evacuation notices and safety advisories, and reminding members of the logistics community that their post-storm help could be needed soon. The group will continue to update its Disaster Micro-Site with Hurricane Helene resources and with requests for donated logistics assistance, most of which will start arriving within 24 to 72 hours after the storm’s initial landfall, ALAN said.