As part of the world’s largest publishing group, United Book Distributors (UBD), anticipates that it will pick, pack and dispatch in excess of 40 million books this year alone, and, seeing a five-fold growth in its operations in the last seven years, a best practice national distribution centre is paramount to its success.

UBD’s national distribution centre (NDC) is based in Scoresby, Victoria. Its operations have 29,000 square meters of usable floor space as a result of its three-level, 7,000 square-meter order-picking mezzanine and newly-commissioned adjacent Warehouse B building.

According to Sebastian Parkes, UBD’s managing director; the Scoresby NDC is the heart of the business, with the facility supporting its internal publishing companies, agencies, and third-party arrangements for both trade and educational publishing groups.

UBD’s operations are sophisticated in distribution capability, with service delivery and speed crucial to success.

“The rapid growth of our business and operations is wholly a result of how many titles we can accurately pick and pack each day as we endeavor to always exceed our customers’ expectations.

Currently, the Scoresby NDC picks over 150,000 books a day and up to 400,000 in the peak seasons, from an inventory of in excess of 50,000 titles and 22 million books,” Mr. Parkes said.

“As UBD strives for continual process improvement and efficiency gains, we identified that to manage our growth we needed to further expand the existing Scoresby facility. The result was to extend our operations and develop what we refer to as Warehouse B, a newly-commissioned, 5,100 square-metres building that is fully racked as a narrow-aisle zone of the NDC.”

Warehouse B was established as an additional reserve location for bulk stock, with replenishment occurring as necessary into pick locations at the adjacent Warehouse A building. The facility utilizes RF technology linked to the Manhattan Associates WMS Logistics PRO system. The technology ensures that operations are paperless with RF terminals on all vehicles.

The new facility has also been designed with environmental considerations and efficiencies in mind. The lighting in Warehouse B is fluorescent and employs motion sensors in racking aisles, almost halving the electricity consumed previously, using typical high-bay warehouse light fittings.

Warehouses A and B are linked directly through the WMS and RF systems and Warehouse B is simply identified as a zone within the broader UBD operations.

“The addition of Warehouse B has enabled UBD to add 10,000 reserve locations to our Scoresby operations. As a result of this year’s business expansion, Warehouse B is now already two-thirds full, making it a crucial component of our entire NDC.”

New warehouse, new partner

“One of the most significant decisions that we made was to partner with a different racking and storage company for all of our requirements in Warehouse B. We went out to tender for this expansion and selected SSI Schaefer as our partner. We predominantly chose SSI Schaefer because they impressed from the outset with their professionalism in understanding our requirement and then designing a solution that ably met our functional, timing and pricing expectations,” Mr. Parkes said.

“SSI Schaefer was more than just a supplier of racking, with the team working closely with us to design and implement the ‘right solution’ for our business. Its expertise and particularly sensible recommendations in relation to OH&S advantaged them over others. Its team focused on space optimization and their racking was of the highest quality. We now have 690 bays of selective pallet racking in Warehouse B, designed with modularity and flexibility to adapt to our changing needs in the future,” he said.

SSI Schaefer installed its Interlock VNA I600 Selective Pallet Racking in Warehouse B, including two single-entry pallet racks of 9,500 high and 838 deep x 61.960 mm long, comprising of twenty three bays of 2,600 x 85 mm box beam plus uprights. In addition, SSI Schaefer installed eleven double-entry I600 selective pallet racks of 9,500 high x 2,057 deep x 838 mm frames. The selective pallet racking consists of six beam levels, and all single-entry bays have portal steel ties connecting to the double entry racks in the adjoining aisle.

The SSI Schaefer I600 selective pallet racking system offers UBD the flexibility towards future modifications and integration of picking levels to meet new and modified product ranges. Depending on the weight and number of storage levels, multiple storage locations are possible with the Schaefer I600, and take into consideration UBD’s space utilization economics. Bay load capacities up to 28 t are possible with the I600 system, and have an upright width of 90 mm and 115 mm with height adjustability at 50 mm intervals.

United Book Distributors

UBD is the wholly-owned warehousing and distribution division of Pearson Australia Group (PAG), Australia's largest book publisher. It receives, holds and distributes books and related goods on behalf of PAG, its agencies and third-party logistics (3PL) clients. PAG is in turn part of Pearson PLC, a dual listed international media company with market-leading businesses in education, business information and consumer publishing.

Pearson's origin in Australia dates back to 1946 when it was established in South Melbourne as Penguin Books. For many years it was simply a distribution branch of Penguin UK, moving to the suburb of Mitcham in 1953 and then to Ringwood in 1963. At Ringwood it operated a low-technology distribution centre from the same premises. By 2001, that facility had reached capacity and PAG was finding it difficult to support the company's rapidly growing business.

Pearson consequently decided to commission a purpose-built distribution centre in the Melbourne suburb of Scoresby, and the business was branded United Book Distributors. The UBD name clearly reflects the core area of competence of the business as it accommodates the distribution requirements of Pearson's three publishing divisions: Penguin, Dorling Kindersley and Pearson Education, as well as a number of agency and third-party distribution customers.

For more information call 1800 SCHAEFER, email info@schaeferssi.com.au or visit www.ssi-schaefer.com.au