Denver--A computerized conveyor belt snakes through the 214,000 square feet that now make up the NAPA Denver Distribution Center. Parts travel along on its black surface in unison towards a centralized shipping area that connects the new 50,000-square-foot expansion with the main warehouse.
The $800,000 conveyor belt system is part of a recently completed $3.7 million project to improve the efficiency and capacity of the NAPA Denver Distribution Center, said David Stauber, operations manager.
"We've done similar upgrades in other distribution centers, and it's been fantastic," said Sales Manager Will Rogers. "It really goes a long way in what we can do to service our customers."
"The space allows us to do things we haven't been able to do before," said General Manager Scott Carlson. "It gave us much needed expansion room for inventory." The additional space has allowed an increase of $1.68 million in inventory, he said.
Part of that inventory addition is NAPA's Altrom products, Carlson said, an import line of parts and chemicals. Added inventory includes bulk commodities, such as oil and antifreeze, he said, adding that they are stored in the expansion area with four- and five-tier mezzanine racking.
"We buy everything in the absolute largest volume possible," Carlson said. The savings from truckload purchases, he said, are passed along to the 126 independent and company-owned jobber stores that the distribution center services in the Rocky Mountain region.
To accommodate the increasing volume of truckload purchases, the crew at the Denver distribution center said they changed the way they receive and ship inventory.
"From a simple standpoint of handling product, there were some logistical challenges," Rogers said. Before the expansion that was completed last year, he said shipping and receiving were conducted in the same area, creating inefficiencies.
"We were dealing with limited space," Stauber said. "We had trouble handling the increase in inventory." A stopgap measure to accommodate increasing sales volume before the expansion was to open an off-site warehouse near the Stapleton area that processed cores and warranty parts, which are now handled under one roof.
Shipping is now conducted in the front of the building, while seven dedicated receiving bays have been added, Stauber said. It's much easier to get product in the building now, he pointed out.
Since the distribution center handles such a large volume, it's not uncommon to receive one to three shipments a week from a single supplier, Carlson said.
Another benefit of a dedicated receiving area is that loading docks are now freed up to constantly load trucks for jobber store deliveries as far as Fruita, Colo., Gordon, Neb., Oberlin, Kan., Casper, Wyo., and Trinidad, Colo., Stauber said. The 17 trucks depart between 7:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m., driving more than 5,000 miles a night, he added.
The inventory shipped from the distribution center is the most diverse among the 63 distribution centers nationwide, Carlson said, noting that the Denver center is also the largest in volume for tool and equipment sales.
"We are the largest distributor of batteries in the NAPA system," he said. "The extreme heat and cold of Colorado makes the battery business huge here."
The distribution center stocks batteries for everything from tractor-trailers to agricultural and snowmobiles, Stauber said. To keep the batteries fresh, a racking system equipped with rollers uses gravity to pull older batteries to the front of the shelf, while new ones are loaded in the rear, he said. A 10,000-square-foot portion of the warehouse holds Martin Senour Paint, Stauber said, and is equipped with fire-retardant ceilings and walls and explosion-proof lights. To keep employees comfortable in this area, he said they use Port-A-Cool units to offset the heat the lights put out. The dedicated paint storage area allows more depth and breadth of product, he said, adding that they now carry Martin Senour's new Planet Color line with vibrant custom colors and effects.
Along with the expansion came some changes in the distribution center's retail storefront, Stauber said. In the past, counterpeople pulled their own parts, he said, adding that now it's all done via radio-controlled scanners through NAPA's Real-time Automated Distribution System (RADS).
During Parts & People's visit, another storefront was under construction at the distribution center, dedicated to over-the-road truck parts, Carlson said. The heavy-duty truck parts program, Traction, is the first of its kind in the contiguous United States, he said, adding that the store is scheduled to open this summer.
That concept was borrowed from NAPA Canada, with a single U.S. operation in Anchorage, Alaska. In six months, Carlson said, he expects to conduct $180,000 worth of heavy-duty parts business a month.
