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Founded in 1939, Dollar General
is a Fortune 500 company and a leader in general consumer
merchandising. DG is growing at a tremendous rate and
has increased its number of store locations from 1800
in 1994 to over 3600 in 1999.
WMS Sites and Specifics
Dollar General chose Catalyst WMS to run its distribution
centers to support their growth, beginning with the Ardmore,
Oklahoma facility in 1995. Since this initial installation,
Catalyst WMS managed facilities have been opened in South
Boston, Virginia; Indiana, Mississippi; and Fulton, Missouri.
In addition, WMS is successfully installed in the recently
modernized Scottville, Kentucky facility. Two additional
facilities are currently under construction. Each distribution
center ranges from 800,000 to 1.2 million square feet.
Each operating facility has Catalyst WMS installed using
the Ingres database software being processed on IBM’s
RS/6000 Model J50; supporting over 150 Intermec/Norand
terminals; Real Time Solutions Pick-To-Light technology;
OCE Printing Systems laser printers and interfacing to
both Buschman and Rapistan conveyor control systems. The
inventory mix of DG is 82% hardlines (household cleaning
items, batteries, plastics and non-perishable foods) and
18% softlines.
The Typical Dollar General Facility
Each facility is designed to run as close to 24 hour/7
day operations as possible. All critical systems are designed
with redundant systems and UPS and emergency power support.
Receiving, allocation, replenishment, picking and shipping
are performed as a continuous flow operation throughout
the day. Physically, each facility is at least 800,000
square feet with over 50,000 storage locations; 5800 forward
pick locations and 5,000 SKUs. Storage media, planned
and installed by The Materials Handling Group, is mainly
one-deep by one-wide pallet racking for reserve storage,
pallet flow rack for the case pick area and carton flow
rack for the repack picking area. Loose item and very
small non-conveyable order selection is controlled by
the Real Time Solutions PTL system. Full case (pick to
belt and flow through) fulfillment, non-conveyable fulfillment,
stocking and replenishment functions are RF directed.
WMS is interfaced to either Buschman or Rapistan high-speed
single sortation systems that can process up to 12,000
cases per hour. Each facility is very capable of shipping
over 200,000 cases daily. Network Services Group provides
all data, voice and phone networks and computer room design
in the facility as turnkey systems.
Merchandise Movement
Receipts arrive from warehouse transfers and external
vendors. Scheduling for inbound merchandise is being transitioned
to the Manugistics logistics systems. Trailers are then
scheduled to a dock and unloaded.
Next, pallets are sorted by planned storage zone and detail
received. Putaway drivers then pick up pallets in receipt
staging and put them away to reserve racking. For inbound
loads that contain high volume stock keeping units (SKUs),
trailers are spotted in the shipping docks and the receivers
RF sort and cross-dock merchandise to outbound route trailers
by store.
Host order processing is being transitioned from legacy
DEC/VAX applications to Island Pacific systems based on
the IBM AS/400. Orders are selected for inclusion into
a wave based upon route definitions within a weekly delivery
schedule. Pick activity is at 70% case, 25% pallet/non-conveyable,
and 5% less than-case-levels. Dollar General is expecting
their volumes to increase in the less-than-case pick area.
To address this need, they are installing a Real Time
Solutions Pick-To-Light system. Case and repack picking
is RF/label driven pick-to-belt. Non-conveyable and pallets
are RF-picked, loaded and ship scanned. Store orders are
shipped out on the Dollar General fleet to over 1,000
stores. Each facility services 200 stores per day.
Future Plans
Dollar General is considering upgrading to WMS Release
7.1 with the Oracle database software, which provides
increased retail-specific functionality. They are also
planning future projects with Catalyst for additional
sites. The next Dollar General DC’s are being constructed
in Florida and Ohio in the year 2000, both running on
the Catalyst WMS. Each facility will be a full service
operation with evolutionary improvements based upon experience
learned in previous operations. |
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Adobe
Acrobat Reader |
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Installer |
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To properly view the downloadable files
on this page, it is necessary to have a version of Adobe
Acrobat installed onto your computer. If you do not already
have this application, a free version is available for
download above. |
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