Juice and jam maker hands West Coast distribution duties over to 3PL
Santa Fe Springs, CA — May 5, 2006 — Juice and jam company Welch's has signed a three-year contract with Weber Distribution, a logistics and supply chain management provider, to serve as its West Coast distribution center, effectively immediately.
From Welch's Lawton, Mich., manufacturing plant, more than 100 different flavors and sizes of juices and jellies are shipped via rail to Weber's La Mirada, Calif.-based facility. The 203,000-square-foot distribution center contains six onsite rail doors where roughly 260 inbound loads or nearly 450,000 cases of Welch's products are received each month.
Some of the product is stored in a 75,000-square-foot section of the warehouse, while much of it is immediately processed and labeled for distribution to Welch's customers across the 11 Western states. Welch's customers include mass retailers and grocery chains such as Wal-Mart, Costco, Safeway and Vons, as well as convenience, food/drug and specialty stores.
According to Bruce True, Welch's manager of distribution planning, Welch's hired Weber because of its expertise in handling grocery and for its distribution network. "We closed our plant on the West Coast, so we needed to find a third-party logistics (3PL) company that could handle warehousing, order consolidation, and delivery to our customers," said True. "Until Weber, we were shipping 95 percent of the product from our plant warehouses directly to our customers."
Weber processes, picks, labels and transports an average of 425 orders, or more than 350,000 cases, per month for Welch's.
As part of the agreement, Welch's is taking advantage of Weber's vendor compliance program, which manages all of the major retailers' specific routing, shipping and labeling requirements. The compliance program includes a custom-designed internal Web site that allows Weber's warehouses to reference major retailers' most recent routing and shipping requirements without having to individually review and interpret routing and vendor guides.
Additional Articles of Interest
— As market conditions continue to change, manufacturers are looking for any extra advantage against their competitors. Could a manufacturing execution system be the solution? Read more in "Extending Supply Chain Execution in Production to Improve Fulfillment," an SDCExec.com exclusive.
— OEMs are ready to embrace Lean Manufacturing after the 2001 recession, but traditional approaches were designed for vertically integrated enterprises. The answer to their problem? Extended Lean and Statistical Kanban. Read more in "Extended Lean Can Make Your Supply Chain Hum," only on SDCExec.com.
Santa Fe Springs, CA — May 5, 2006 — Juice and jam company Welch's has signed a three-year contract with Weber Distribution, a logistics and supply chain management provider, to serve as its West Coast distribution center, effectively immediately.
From Welch's Lawton, Mich., manufacturing plant, more than 100 different flavors and sizes of juices and jellies are shipped via rail to Weber's La Mirada, Calif.-based facility. The 203,000-square-foot distribution center contains six onsite rail doors where roughly 260 inbound loads or nearly 450,000 cases of Welch's products are received each month.
Some of the product is stored in a 75,000-square-foot section of the warehouse, while much of it is immediately processed and labeled for distribution to Welch's customers across the 11 Western states. Welch's customers include mass retailers and grocery chains such as Wal-Mart, Costco, Safeway and Vons, as well as convenience, food/drug and specialty stores.
According to Bruce True, Welch's manager of distribution planning, Welch's hired Weber because of its expertise in handling grocery and for its distribution network. "We closed our plant on the West Coast, so we needed to find a third-party logistics (3PL) company that could handle warehousing, order consolidation, and delivery to our customers," said True. "Until Weber, we were shipping 95 percent of the product from our plant warehouses directly to our customers."
Weber processes, picks, labels and transports an average of 425 orders, or more than 350,000 cases, per month for Welch's.
As part of the agreement, Welch's is taking advantage of Weber's vendor compliance program, which manages all of the major retailers' specific routing, shipping and labeling requirements. The compliance program includes a custom-designed internal Web site that allows Weber's warehouses to reference major retailers' most recent routing and shipping requirements without having to individually review and interpret routing and vendor guides.
Additional Articles of Interest
— As market conditions continue to change, manufacturers are looking for any extra advantage against their competitors. Could a manufacturing execution system be the solution? Read more in "Extending Supply Chain Execution in Production to Improve Fulfillment," an SDCExec.com exclusive.
— OEMs are ready to embrace Lean Manufacturing after the 2001 recession, but traditional approaches were designed for vertically integrated enterprises. The answer to their problem? Extended Lean and Statistical Kanban. Read more in "Extended Lean Can Make Your Supply Chain Hum," only on SDCExec.com.
