Orgill nears relaunch of Georgia DC
Almost 30 years ago, Memphis-based Orgill made the giant leap from one distribution center to two when it opened what was then a state-of-the-art DC in Tifton, Georgia.
And now that the distributor has grown to eight DC’s across North America, Orgill’s supply-chain experts have returned to Tifton with some major improvements in speed and efficiency.
Leading that effort is Randy Williams, Orgill’s executive vice president of distribution, who helped build the Tifton DC back in 1995. (The facility originally overshot its 5-year sales projections in its first year.)
“We are taking advantage of every opportunity to build technology and new distribution techniques into this facility that will help us create efficiencies for both our team and our customers,” Williams said. “The investments we are making in this facility will ultimately help us get products to our customers more efficiently.”
Robots at Work
New to the Orgill DC in Tifton is the Geek+ Shelf-to-Person PopPick System.
It’s described as a system that uses low-to-the-ground, disc-like P series robots to move tall stacks of shelves and pallets to a picking station. In the system, robots bring totes to the picking station and the picker selects the product according to a screen prompt.
The system is designed to be more accurate and more efficient than manual picking, while eliminating redundant back-and-forth walking down long aisles.
In an interview with HBSDealer, Williams pointed to some of the new features coming to Tifton:
- Air conditioning;
- A fleet of Geek+ robots (see sidebar);
- New product flow — receiving on one side, shipping on the other (everything was on one side in the older version of Tifton);
- 25 percent more space, from 650,000 sq. ft. to 800,000 sq. ft. and more efficient space;
- Very Narrow Aisles (VNA) system;
- Infused with Artificial Intelligence.
The new-and-improved distribution center is slated to come on line in April. Williams recognized the importance of a team effort in bringing the project to fruition. He said special recognition goes to Vic Price, Senior vice president of operations; Taylor Monjo, operations project manager; Bill Richardson, vice president of the Southeast distribution center and his team; Jeff Gentry, technology vice president; and Tim Elliott, technology director. “Their contributions have been invaluable,” Williams said.
The new Tifton DC “represents a entirely different way of doing business through our distribution centers,” said Orgill President and CEO Boyden Moore. “We’re going to pick up a lot of efficiency and a lot of additional throughput.”
In addition to the new construction in Tifton, over the past two years, Orgill added 1.3 million square feet of warehouse space when it opened its new Rome, New York, distribution center in 2021 and expanded its Hurricane, Utah, distribution center in 2022.
Orgill now operates eight distribution centers in North America with 6.7 million square feet of capacity and more than 75,000 SKUs in each distribution center.
