Justin's Reflection

During my recent visit to the Army Logistics Base(ALB), it was a wonderful opportunity to be able to experience everything first hand. Once in there, I realised that they adopt the through flow layout and also managed to see the Goods in, main storage, order picking, marshalling and goods out areas. A total of 5 different kinds of storage systems are used in ALB, which are the Pallet ASRS, Bin ASRS, very narrow aisle(VNA), mobile racking and the vertical carousel system. It was really helpful to actually see how these systems work as it was very hard to understand without being able to see it happening. At the receiving bay, the powered mobile racking system is used and the goods are transferred to the main storage area as soon as they are received. I also learnt that the vertical carousel system is used to store only small items, for example medical products. It was located at the 3rd floor and retrieving the items were extremely fast, allowing the goods-to-picker concept. The material handling equipment seen at the inbound and outbound areas were the forklift and pallet jack. This allows the staff to move large pallets around the areas swiftly. Using large 40FT trucks to deliver their goods, it helps them to save on delivery costs since having larger truck loads would benefit the company with economies of scale. Thus it was a great learning journey at ALB and I am very grateful for that opportunity.