Berco Of America Customer Story

Introduction

There’s a bit of irony in the fact that the heavy equipment used to mine rare-earth materials tends to wear out quickly, needing more and more of those materials in the form of replacement parts to continue working. This irony is not lost on the manufacturers of these wear parts – least of all on Berco S.p.A, an Italian manufacturer whose forged steel undercarriage components power mining and construction equipment around the globe.

Berco’s Waukesha, Wisconsin manufacturing plant plays a vital role in the regional supply and distribution of these wear parts, serving hundreds of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and aftermarket suppliers across the country. As domestic demand for undercarriage components continued to climb into 2023, Berco of America, Inc. contacted Fairchild Equipment to discuss solutions that would improve their overall warehouse’s efficiency and throughput. Just like the mining equipment that Berco’s parts serve, we were keen to dig in and see what we could unearth.

About Us

Fairchild Equipment is the Upper Midwest’s premier Material Handling Equipment and Service resource, with headquarters in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and numerous offices spread across the region to serve customers in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Northern Illinois, North Dakota, and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. From complete Automated Warehouse Systems to Equipment Rentals, Spare Parts to Safety Training, Fairchild’s dedication to our customer’s success has earned us numerous awards and accolades including the prestigious Most Valuable Partner (MVP) award from the Material Handling Equipment Distributor Association (MHEDA) eleven years in a row.   

Application Summary

In the heavy industrial fields of mining, construction, and earthmoving, one category of equipment known as “crawling equipment” is tasked with performing the most demanding, abusive work on the jobsite. Crawler vehicles serve one key purpose: to travel over rough terrain, hold firm to loose and sometimes unstable ground, and move earthen materials so that valuable resources can be exposed or extracted. These vehicles propel themselves using a chain attached to track pads, called shoes, instead of wheels, because tracks provide substantially better traction, ground contact area, and stability on the unimproved dirt and rock surfaces they operate on. Vehicle tracks churn up lots of debris that naturally finds its way into the tracks’ mechanical drive components, which cause these components to wear out over time. Crawler track parts are generally referred to as undercarriage components, and a highly specialized parts manufacturing industry exists solely to supply these undercarriage components both for new equipment and for ongoing service replacements. Undercarriage part manufacturing typically involves steels that are poured, forged, and machined with advanced alloys to be assembled into high-performance parts such as track rollers, shoes, chain links, and drive sprockets.

Challenge

While most warehouse re-racking projects have traditionally focused on maximizing pallet positions, more and more projects these days seek an optimal balance of efficiency and capacity. When Berco of America reached out to our application engineering team, they made it abundantly clear that they were of this newer mindset. This project needed to help overcome operational challenges more than solve for raw capacity issues. We interviewed the customer to gain a clear understanding of their concerns, after which we were able to break down Berco’s expectations into four key objectives:

• Product Handling Efficiency – the single largest motivator for the project was Berco’s interest in reducing the time and work steps needed to handle routine pallet movements. Up to this point, many products were stored in floor lanes stacked up to seven pallets high, accessible from one lane end only. This arrangement caused a great deal of unnecessary pallet stack shuffling in order to access products far back in a lane.  

• Warehouse Organization – Berco’s warehouse space held a mixture of pallet racking styles and floor stacked loads, making it difficult to navigate as well as keep organized. Any new storage solutions needed to offer improved storage density while increasing SKU selectivity, by breaking up the warehouse into logical product blocks that forklifts could easily reach without too much travel.

• Inventory Management – keeping track of inventory was another pain point for Berco, as the sporadic nature of their shipping and receiving traffic led to ad-hoc storage practices that were very difficult to manage. Products would often get misplaced in plain sight simply from being stored in incorrect locations and not being readily inspectable (buried in deep, tall pallet stacks).

• Storage Safety –forged steel components contained in Berco’s undercarriage products are heavy, large, and notably hazardous when stored in tall floor stacks. For this reason, Berco had specific interest in improving the safety of their storage areas, requesting that any new solution serve to protect employees and hold products as captive as possible.

“We’ve had a very good experience with Fairchild. Not just the price, but also the engineering, the customer service, and their overall good nature. Their team has been outstanding to work with – good service and good people. With [Fairchild’s] help we evaluated multiple racking options and landed on push-back for its efficiency benefits, and now are looking at new electric forklifts for their sustainability benefits as well.” 

–Carl Huttner, Project Manager, Berco of America

Solution

With Berco’s objectives absorbed and prioritized, it was time for our team to sort out a path forward. Our engineers modeled potential solutions using drive-in, push-back, pallet flow, single and double selective racking styles, each considering Berco’s actual pallet dimensions, weights, forklift types, and movement rates. Since we were solving for efficiency and maximum storage volume, we spent extra time focusing on layout, forklift pick times, and lot size optimization. After a few iterations in review with the customer, together we landed on a surefire solution that hit every one of Berco’s objectives (and then some), consisting of the following features:  

• Racking Design – the winning design took the current stacked pallets from half of the vertical space in the building all the way up to the ceiling. The final design was three deep and four deep pushback racking arranged so the rear pallet load narrowly missed the structural building components. Our design allowed for front and rear overhang of the load on the pallet so that any larger dimension SKU could be slotted in any pushback lane location.

• Racking Layout – the new pushback racking was considered in several different configurations around the warehouse before it was finalized and ordered. After placing the order, Berco shifted their production plan to linearize their processing flow which required us to re-design the layout before installation and the final installed layout effectuated an even more effective layout than the original plan. The final installed layout provided more pallet locations in the same area by providing longer rows with less aisles.

• Highly Effective Project Management – the Fairchild Equipment team acted quickly to work out all the details then project manage every detail of the installation. We led the installation in separate areas concurrently. Installation services would be applied in one area while teardown and reconfigure services were being applied in another. Most of the original structural racking was taken down, moved to the other end of the building, and reassembled in another area. Then the new pushback racking was installed in the area the structural racking had previously been in. Because of floor and pallet storage space needs during the installation process, we had to be strategic on how this was done.

• Future Opportunities for Operations – with the new pallet racking layout, additional areas of the warehouse were set up for future operational enhancements, such as dedicated staging use, streamlined material flow off production lines, and changing out an underutilized production room to a new storage and receiving room. In the upcoming months, Fairchild Equipment will also be providing and installing structural racking in other warehouse areas.

• Future Opportunities for Automation – Berco has even greater plans for enhancing their warehouse functions with automated inventory control, mission planning, geolocating, and perhaps even full warehouse management system deployment. With an eye to these future automation opportunities, we made sure that our solutions would be compatible to avoid any redundant costs at that time.

Results

Performing installation work in active warehouses is always challenging, but Berco couldn’t have been better prepared. Through diligent planning and coordination, Berco and Fairchild completed all demolition, relocation, installation, and commissioning activities in record time, all without needing any facility or production downtime. During installation, minor modifications were made to further enhance Berco’s operations and employee safety, such as reorienting a few racking sections for better access and adding a traffic tunnel for special material flows. Once installed, Berco’s team quickly labelled and marked the new storage locations, and cut their staff loose to pack it full of product pallets. With this new pushback racking and warehouse layout, Berco has increased their warehouse’s bandwidth and efficiency in getting undercarriage components out to their mining and construction customers.

Fairchild Equipment’s family values and dedication to world-class material handling solutions drive us to earn customers like Berco for life. They are a company that is focused on improving the productivity, efficiency and profitability of companies in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area as all of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Northern Illinois, North Dakota, and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

For more information or to discuss which Warehouse Optimization solution might be best for you, please send us a message or give us a call at (844) 432-4724.