Dispatch 2.11 2.indd - Logistics Association of Australia

NSW EVENT REPORT
ACCO Australia Site Visit
On Wednesday 14 November LAA
members were given a personal tour
through Acco Australia’s 26,000m 2
manufacturing and warehousing facility
which is strategically located at Arndell
Park in Sydney’s outer western suburbs.
A clever blend of appropriate
resources, including medium and
high tech equipment that is managed
by an all-encompassing Warehouse
Management System allows ACCO
Australia to complete a monumental
task, on a daily basis. As a supplier to
both commercial and retail channels
the business demands a combination
of high volume, high velocity with EDI
compliance in an FMCG environment.
LAA members were welcomed by Mark
Bell (ACCO’s Operations Director)
and other key members of the ACCO
team, who provided us with a good
understanding of their business task
and the structured solutions that are
employed in their operations.
As a consequence of today’s demanding
expectations, ACCO offers most products
in any combination of split case, full
case or pallet quantities. A noon cutoff
is in place for next day delivery to
Sydney Metropolitan, NSW Country,
Greater Melbourne and Brisbane. This
service covers 35% of daily orders.
ACCO services more than 1500
customers. To put that into perspective,
large chain store entities are only
recognised as a single customer. ACCO’s
delivery task covers orders that may
be multiple B-Double loads (of straight
full pallet stocks) to a commercial
customer, to loads of assembled stock
for cross-docking, through to direct to
store and even to the home office.
During a discussion regarding ACCO’s
level of investment, Mark Bell revealed
that with slim industry margins they
cannot afford to get it wrong, otherwise
the freight cost associated with
returns could exceed the margin.
In the time since Acco first occupied
its purpose-built facility in 1998 it has
maintained a continual improvement
program to both refine processes and
to keep abreast of developments in
market and customers' ever-changing
demands. Enhancements in recent years
have culminated in a WM and Sortation
system that provides a flexible and
adaptive platform for any customer order.
ACCO is a company with three primary
elements – manufacturing, warehousing
and despatch – operating and fully
integrated on the same SAP WM system,
without any other third party peripherals
or software (apart from RDS sorter).
There are many fascinating components
in this complete system, from the
‘picking planning simulator’ to the ‘smart
sorter’ however, two that attracted
particular interest were the forklift
queue system and the smart stretchwrapper.
The forklift queue directs traffic
movements throughout manufacturing,
warehousing and despatch based on a
variety of weighted priorities including
the shortest travel path through the
nine zones in the warehouse.
The smart stretch-wrapper has a builtin
scanner that reads either full or built
pallet SSCC labels. The information is
communicated back to SAP during the
wrapping cycle and delivery details go
to the inline printers where two outbound
despatch labels are produced
and applied to both (approach) face
sides of the pallet of goods.
Our particular thanks go to Mark and
his team for providing our members
with such an informative and enjoyable
tour. It was clear to all that ACCO will
carry its success into the future through
working in a very clever fashion.
Kim Rothwell, LAA Committee
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