UNICEF's new global procurement and distribution center in Copenhagen is uniquely designed to dispatch emergency relief shipments to locations worldwide within 48 hours.
David Maloney has been a journalist for more than 35 years and is currently the group editorial director for DC Velocity and Supply Chain Quarterly magazines. In this role, he is responsible for the editorial content of both brands of Agile Business Media. Dave joined DC Velocity in April of 2004. Prior to that, he was a senior editor for Modern Materials Handling magazine. Dave also has extensive experience as a broadcast journalist. Before writing for supply chain publications, he was a journalist, television producer and director in Pittsburgh. Dave combines a background of reporting on logistics with his video production experience to bring new opportunities to DC Velocity readers, including web videos highlighting top distribution and logistics facilities, webcasts and other cross-media projects. He continues to live and work in the Pittsburgh area.
In what must be considered one of the most generous gifts ever made, the government of Denmark in April 2012 handed over the keys to a multimillion dollar procurement and distribution center to UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund.
The facility, strategically located near the Port of Copenhagen, is designed to support the work UNICEF carries out on behalf of children around the world. With a staff of 320, the UNICEF Supply Division undertakes all of UNICEF's international procurement and also oversees and guides procurement and logistics in the field. It handles around $2 billion of supplies each year. Its work includes shipping emergency relief supplies in response to typhoons, war, famine, earthquakes, and other natural and man-made disasters. For instance, after Typhoon Haiyan battered the Philippines, planes carrying items like tents for child-friendly spaces, water purification and sanitation kits, and medical supplies were on their way from Copenhagen within 48 hours.
In addition to disaster relief shipments, the facility procures and delivers materials—such as vaccines, medicines, nutritional supplements, and educational supplies—to support UNICEF's ongoing child survival and development initiatives around the world. The automated design gives it the flexibility to process both rush orders required by disaster response and a steady flow of goods shipped to support the agency's ongoing global mission.
TURNKEY DESIGN
While UNICEF is based at the United Nations headquarters in New York City, its Supply Division has been based in Copenhagen since 1962. It is one of eight U.N. agencies with headquarters or major operations in the Danish capital. Most of these offices are located on an urban campus known as U.N. City, where UNICEF Supply previously operated a manual distribution center. The new facility for the Supply Division was built on a site near Copenhagen's port with the goal of creating more efficient procurement and distribution operations.
UNICEF itself was not directly involved in the construction of its new building, as the people of Denmark wanted it to be part of their contribution to the agency's important work. UNICEF merely provided guidelines on what it needed to fulfill its worldwide mission. The Danish government then hired Schaefer Systems, an international designer, integrator, and manufacturer of warehouse systems, to design an automated warehouse system that would meet UNICEF's needs.
The result is a building that is now the world's largest and most technologically advanced facility for humanitarian work. The Schaefer Systems design incorporates automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS), miniloads, goods-to-person picking stations, electric rail shuttle cars, conveyors, and a new warehouse management system. In its first year alone, the system allowed for the precise handling of $115 million worth of products, while boosting both throughput and performance.
RELIEF READY TO GO
Currently, a core staff of 34 handles about 800 stock-keeping units (SKUs). These range greatly in size and purpose, from pencils and erasers to tents and tarpaulins. More than half of the products handled at the facility are medicines.
One of the operation's chief tasks is to build kits for various UNICEF outreach programs. The kits bring together items that would commonly be used together, such as medical equipment or educational supplies. Kitting makes them easier to ship and to clear customs. The day I visited the site, staffers were assembling kits of basic pharmaceuticals for UNICEF's health centers in Zimbabwe. The kits are stored at the facility until needed either for ongoing programs, like those in Zimbabwe, or for disaster response initiatives.
"We tailor-make the kits and try to anticipate what the health needs will be, but it is not easy, as we never know when the next cholera outbreak will occur," says Kyungnan Park, chief of the Logistics Centre Supply Division. She hails from South Korea and is one of the many international workers here. In all, people from some 70 different countries work at the Supply Division, and about 20 nationalities are represented on the warehouse floor.
A typical medical kit might include medicines, medical instruments and utensils, bandages, and other first aid supplies. A family water kit may include such items as water purification tablets, buckets, and soap.
Another of UNICEF's kits addresses educational needs. Called School-in-a-Box, it contains paper, pencils, crayons, exercise books, and other supplies for a teacher and 40 students to cover three months. And since attending school constitutes only a portion of a child's day in a relief camp or developing area, the agency also provides recreation kits containing items such as basketballs, soccer balls, and sports nets. While the facility can reach any part of the globe, over 60 percent of the developmental initiatives that Copenhagen supports are programs in sub-Saharan Africa.
HOPE ON THE MOVE
Products distributed by the facility arrive from suppliers all over the world. Most of these come in containers that are unloaded from cargo ships at the nearby port. Pharmaceuticals, however, are often delivered by air and then trucked to the site.
The facility offers 9,000 square meters (96,875 square feet) of storage space. Most products are housed in the high-bay warehouse, which contains an eight-aisle automated storage and retrieval system. Eight storage and retrieval machines serve the aisles, moving pallets in and out of 37,000 double-deep positions located on 12 rack levels.
With its location in Scandinavia, Copenhagen tends to experience cold winters. To maintain temperatures for products in the various areas of the rack-supported building, the facility deploys 28 temperature monitors inside the structure and one outside the building. If the temperature should go too high, skylights will open to cool it down. If it gets too cold, an air circulation system blows warm air from the ceiling into the aisles. The design assures the floor remains frost-free no matter how low the temperature drops outside. The movement of the cranes also helps to circulate air throughout the racking.
The storage cranes are tasked with retrieving single-item pallets and conveying them to output stations, where electric shuttles that ride on rails take over the transport. The shuttles run throughout the building on a track totaling 450 meters (1,476 feet) in length. They are the backbone of the building's transport system, which relies on automated conveying to handle much of the work normally done by lift trucks. Lift trucks are reserved for tasks such as moving large, bulky items like tents to shipping as well as for inserting and retrieving pallets from the automated systems.
The facility's two miniload systems feed smaller boxed items to picking stations. Each unit contains a miniload crane that travels down an aisle lined with storage positions. Between the two systems, there are 3,000 tray positions. Each miniload unit has 13 workstations where picking is performed. The cranes deliver trays to the workstations, where displays guide workers in picking items directly into larger order boxes.
After passing through automatic sealing and labeling machines, completed order boxes are delivered by conveyor to palletizing robots. The robots then stack them onto pallets in a sequence determined by the warehouse management system. Two conveyor lines send finished pallets to the shuttle system, where they join with full pallets pulled from the AS/RS for the journey to shipping.
The creation of kits with bulkier items is performed at two workstations. The shuttles transport products from the AS/RS to 20 source pallet locations. The cartons are opened, and their contents are picked from these pallets into order cartons. Completed outgoing boxes are conveyed to the palletizing robots, then head to shipping. Kits that are prebuilt for later shipment are sent to the AS/RS for storage until needed.
Temperature-sensitive pharmaceuticals and relief goods needed immediately ship by air, while most of the goods that support ongoing programs are loaded into containers for ocean transport from the nearby Port of Copenhagen.
ORGANIZED FOR EFFICIENCY
Since it began shipping from the new facility in April 2012, UNICEF Supply has seen throughput levels rise to an average of 120 percent of what it was able to achieve at the previous warehouse, and there's plenty of room to grow. Currently, the facility operates only one shift, Monday through Friday, although additional shifts are added when the need arises.
But beyond the gains in throughput, the ability to respond quickly and accurately when help is needed most is critical to UNICEF's success.
"The automation has given us better organization in our work. Now, we can see our orders, what is missing, what can be packed, and what can't be packed yet," says Kyungnan. She adds that all of the work for creating a kit can be performed simultaneously, which is a huge advantage over the previous operation, where temporary packing lines had to be employed until all of the needed items could be gathered. "Now, it is organized better and we are more efficient," she says. "We can do our work in a systematic and logical way."
States across the Southeast woke up today to find that the immediate weather impacts from Hurricane Helene are done, but the impacts to people, businesses, and the supply chain continue to be a major headache, according to Everstream Analytics.
The primary problem is the collection of massive power outages caused by the storm’s punishing winds and rainfall, now affecting some 2 million customers across the Southeast region of the U.S.
One organization working to rush help to affected regions since the storm hit Florida’s western coast on Thursday night is the American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN). As it does after most serious storms, the group continues to marshal donated resources from supply chain service providers in order to store, stage, and deliver help where it’s needed.
Support for recovery efforts is coming from a massive injection of federal aid, since the White House declared states of emergency last week for Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Affected states are also supporting the rush of materials to needed zones by suspending transportation requirement such as certain licensing agreements, fuel taxes, weight restrictions, and hours of service caps, ALAN said.
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.
As the hours tick down toward a “seemingly imminent” strike by East Coast and Gulf Coast dockworkers, experts are warning that the impacts of that move would mushroom well-beyond the actual strike locations, causing prevalent shipping delays, container ship congestion, port congestion on West coast ports, and stranded freight.
However, a strike now seems “nearly unavoidable,” as no bargaining sessions are scheduled prior to the September 30 contract expiration between the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) and the U.S. Maritime Alliance (USMX) in their negotiations over wages and automation, according to the transportation law firm Scopelitis, Garvin, Light, Hanson & Feary.
The facilities affected would include some 45,000 port workers at 36 locations, including high-volume U.S. ports from Boston, New York / New Jersey, and Norfolk, to Savannah and Charleston, and down to New Orleans and Houston. With such widespread geography, a strike would likely lead to congestion from diverted traffic, as well as knock-on effects include the potential risk of increased freight rates and costly charges such as demurrage, detention, per diem, and dwell time fees on containers that may be slowed due to the congestion, according to an analysis by another transportation and logistics sector law firm, Benesch.
The weight of those combined blows means that many companies are already planning ways to minimize damage and recover quickly from the event. According to Scopelitis’ advice, mitigation measures could include: preparing for congestion on West coast ports, taking advantage of intermodal ground transportation where possible, looking for alternatives including air transport when necessary for urgent delivery, delaying shipping from East and Gulf coast ports until after the strike, and budgeting for increased freight and container fees.
Additional advice on softening the blow of a potential coastwide strike came from John Donigian, senior director of supply chain strategy at Moody’s. In a statement, he named six supply chain strategies for companies to consider: expedite certain shipments, reallocate existing inventory strategically, lock in alternative capacity with trucking and rail providers , communicate transparently with stakeholders to set realistic expectations for delivery timelines, shift sourcing to regional suppliers if possible, and utilize drop shipping to maintain sales.
National nonprofit Wreaths Across America (WAA) kicked off its 2024 season this week with a call for volunteers. The group, which honors U.S. military veterans through a range of civic outreach programs, is seeking trucking companies and professional drivers to help deliver wreaths to cemeteries across the country for its annual wreath-laying ceremony, December 14.
“Wreaths Across America relies on the transportation industry to move the mission. The Honor Fleet, composed of dedicated carriers, professional drivers, and other transportation partners, guarantees the delivery of millions of sponsored veterans’ wreaths to their destination each year,” Courtney George, WAA’s director of trucking and industry relations, said in a statement Tuesday. “Transportation partners benefit from driver retention and recruitment, employee engagement, positive brand exposure, and the opportunity to give back to their community’s veterans and military families.”
WAA delivers wreaths to more than 4,500 locations nationwide, and as of this week had added more than 20 loads to be delivered this season. The wreaths are donated by sponsors from across the country, delivered by truckers, and laid at the graves of veterans by WAA volunteers.
Wreaths Across America
Transportation companies interested in joining the Honor Fleet can visit the WAA website to find an open lane or contact the WAA transportation team at trucking@wreathsacrossamerica.org for more information.
Krish Nathan is the Americas CEO for SDI Element Logic, a provider of turnkey automation solutions and sortation systems. Nathan joined SDI Industries in 2000 and honed his project management and engineering expertise in developing and delivering complex material handling solutions. In 2014, he was appointed CEO, and in 2022, he led the search for a strategic partner that could expand SDI’s capabilities. This culminated in the acquisition of SDI by Element Logic, with SDI becoming the Americas branch of the company.
A native of the U.K., Nathan received his bachelor’s degree in manufacturing engineering from Coventry University and has studied executive leadership at Cranfield University.
Q: How would you describe the current state of the supply chain industry?
A: We see the supply chain industry as very dynamic and exciting, both from a growth perspective and from an innovation perspective. The pandemic hangover is still impacting decisions to nearshore, and that has resulted in a spike in business for us in both the USA and Mexico. Adding new technology to our portfolio has been a significant contributor to our continued expansion.
Q: Distributors were making huge tech investments during the pandemic simply to keep up with soaring consumer demand. How have things changed since then?
A: The consumer demand for e-commerce certainly appears to have cooled since the pandemic high, but our clients continue to see steady growth. Growth, combined with low unemployment and high labor costs, continues to make automation a good investment for many companies.
Q: Robotics are still in high demand for material handling applications. What are some of the benefits of these systems?
A: As an organization, we are investing heavily in software that will allow Element Logic to offer solutions for robotic picking that are hardware-agnostic. We have had success deploying unit picking for order fulfillment solutions and unit placing of items onto tray-based sorters.
From a benefit point of view, we’ve seen the consistency of a given operation improve. For example, the placement accuracy of a product onto a tray is far higher from a robotic arm than from a person. In order fulfillment applications, two of the biggest benefits are reliability and hours of operation. The robots don't call in sick, and they are happy to work 22 hours a day!
Q: SDI Element Logic offers a wide range of automated solutions, including automated storage and sortation equipment. What criteria should distributors use to determine what type of system is right for them?
A: There are a significant number of factors to consider when thinking about automation. In my experience, automation pays for itself in three key ways: It saves space, it increases the efficiency of labor, and it improves accuracy. So evaluating which of these will be [most] beneficial and quantifying the associated savings will lead to a “right sized” investment in technology.
Another important factor to consider is product mix. With a small SKU (stock-keeping unit) base, often automation doesn’t make sense. And with a huge SKU base, there will be products that don’t lend themselves to automation.
With any significant investment, you need to partner with an organization that has deep experience with the technologies that are being considered and … in-depth knowledge of the process that is being automated.
Q: How can a goods-to-person system reduce the amount of labor needed to fill orders?
A: In most order picking operations, there is a considerable amount of walking between pick faces to find the SKUs associated with a given order or set of orders. Goods-to-person eliminates the walking and allows the operator to just pick. I have seen studies that [show] that 75% of the time [required] to assemble an order in a manual picking environment is walking or “non-picking” time. So eliminating walking will reduce the amount of labor needed.
The goods-to-person approach also fits perfectly with robotic picking, so even the actual picking aspect of order assembly can be automated in some instances. For these reasons, [automation offers] a significant opportunity to reduce the labor needed to fulfill a customer order.
Q: If you could pick one thing a company should do to improve its distribution center operations, what would it be?
A: Evaluate. Evaluate the opportunities for improving by considering automation. In my experience, the challenge most companies have is recognizing that automation is an alternative. The barrier to entry is far lower than most people think!