January 2015 marked the first shipments from MSC Industrial Supply Co.'s (MSC) new customer fulfillment center in Columbus, Ohio. MSC – No. 14 on Industrial Distribution's 2015 Big 50 List – value- added distributor of industrial supplies across North America.
Among the new material handling equipment installed in the 400,000-square-foot facility are 12 mobile carts with integrated power from Newcastle Systems. The carts help MSC efficiently receive the more than a quarter million SKUs the company expects to eventually stock in Columbus.
The use of mobile carts in the receiving process is nothing new to MSC. A few years ago, the operations at the company's Atlanta customer fulfillment center developed prototype mobile carts using several old aluminum picking carts and configuring equipment (batteries, chargers, and inverters) that were carried from its industrial stock. It did not take long for MSC managers to realize expected gains in efficiency by processing receipts directly at the receiving docks. However, MSC soon realized it needed more durable carts to maintain the efficiency improvements while meeting increasing customer demands for quick product delivery.
