Auto firm spends R16m to upgrade parts store
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Automotive company General Motors South Africa (GMSA) has spent R16-million on refurbishing its parts and accessories warehouse at its Port Elizabeth plant, which is set to increase productivity of employee’s involved in the parts and accessories distribution processes.
After sales director Dough Harrison said that GMSA had increased the warehouse productivity by 33% over the last 21 months and that it recorded almost almost 100% ontime delivery.
“This is partly due to lean warehousing principles, which involves velocity and commodity stocking.”
Productivity had also increased by introducing standardised work assignments, whereby each employee in the warehouse gets the same workload for each assignment.
“We also placed special focus on the optimisation of ergonomics. The vast majority of work for our employees is between shoulder and knee height, so all parts and accessories are stored at this height. Our employees don’t have to stretch or bend and can get the job done easily,” he explained.
The upgraded warehouse and its operations were modelled around those of other GM facilities around the globe and as such General Motors sent a Service Parts Operations Project Supervisor from GM North America to GMSA last year to assess the company’s existing parts and accessories operations and to assist in the initial planning phase.
The completed facility covers 5 600 m2 and will house 30 000 different parts. In addition, state-of-the-art bar-coding equipment has been installed. Existing IT systems will be integrated with new systems, enabling staff to continue the distribution of national inventories.
“The warehouse increased the employee average of 5,6 lines (lines are one customer order, regardless of the quantity of that order) per day to 6,5 since the opening of the upgraded facility and are hoping to reach eight lines by the end of the year which will equate to 43% improvement in productivity Harrison said. This means that employees were shipping roughly 4 000 lines per day in 714 labour hours, now employees are shipping 4 000 lines in 614 labour hours, a saving of 100 hours per day,” he explained.
