A North Shore company which promotes itself as the country's leading warehouse designer has found a niche export market for its creative talents. Darroch Consulting is fast becoming a significant player on the Australian scene where one of its latest projects, the 18,000sq m Yakka Somerton warehouse in Melbourne, was opened this week by Who Wants to be a Millionaire TV host Eddie McGuire.
Yakka is a private family-owned Australian industrial work-wear and corporate apparel company that takes its name from the Aboriginal word for hard work.
Darroch's managing director, Barry Darroch, says his firm has five projects underway in Australia and an inquiry for a sixth has just been received. Clients include Progressive Enterprises, Foodland in Perth, DFS in Okinawa and Auckland, Gazal Apparel in Sydney and Bridgestone New Zealand.
Darroch Consulting specialises in "designing warehouses from the inside out" and is quickly gaining an international reputation in a field few companies specialise in - the detailed analysis of supply chain management followed by the development and design of smart distribution centres employing the latest technology. |  |
| | Designing warehouses and factories internally before the size of the building is decided has "revolutionised warehouse and factory design and productivity in the past decade", says Darroch. Most of the jobs done by Darroch Consulting have resulted in substantial savings for clients. They gain far more efficient and productive premises with cost savings of up to 20 per cent in some cases. | | |
 | The company designed a smart 3000sq m warehouse in Auckland for Yakka Apparel Solutions Ltd after it won the contract to supply uniforms for the Defence Department. It was one of the first paperless sites in the country and went on to win two awards. This led to Darroch Consulting being hired to revamp Yakka's head office at Broadmeadows in north Melbourne, integrating the company's Thomastown branch. The head office, warehouse and cutting facility were running efficiently for their age and what they did, but the company's business growth demanded a state-of-the-art integrated logistics warehouse and supply chain management strategy that would meet its short and longer term needs, says Darroch. Pressure on Yakka's distribution network increased as the business grew. |
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Like many garment manufacturers, Yakka had shifted much of its production offshore to remain competitively priced. Just a decade ago, the company made about 80 per cent of its goods in Australia. That ratio has now flipped to about 70 per cent imported from countries such as China and Fiji. The changing mix of local and imported product combined with the growth of the business dictated the need for different supply chain strategies and a distribution centre that had sufficient flexibility for expansion.
Senior management were consulted extensively on business detail and supply chain analysis. "As we don't copy the status quo we did a line-by-line analysis of every transaction for 12 months to drill down into what was happening within the business," says Darroch. The analysis also included a site survey, floor walk, study of workflows, access, picking and storage capacity. After months of work Darroch Consulting had a conceptual design for a new generic warehouse, plans for its size, integrated design for handling products, the fitout's capital costs and figures on productivity gains and cost savings. |
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A detailed evaluation by Yakka's senior management found it was uneconomic to rebuild on the Broadmeadows site. Yakka then identified a site previously occupied by Woolworths Safeways at Somerton in Melbourne and Darroch flew across the Tasman immediately to assess its suitability. He had previously looked at the former 18,000sq m on a 4ha site for another client and knew the property.
A detailed evaluation by Yakka's senior management found it was uneconomic to rebuild on the Broadmeadows site. |  |
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Yakka then identified a site previously occupied by Woolworths Safeways at Somerton in Melbourne and Darroch flew across the Tasman immediately to assess its suitability. He had previously looked at the former 18,000sq m on a 4ha site for another client and knew the property. "We reworked our designs and were able to show the property would suit their needs and be cost-efficient." The new distribution centre, self-funded through selling surplus properties, was finished from conception to completion in less than 12 months. It includes the most widespread application of voice-directed systems in Australasia. Voice picking was not part of Yakka's initial thinking, but a visit by Barry and Steven Darroch to the Australian Pharmaceutical Industry's new distribution centre in Sydney changed that. A main benefit with voice picking is its flexibility, leaving both hands and eyes free to do the work. |
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| |  | At this stage Siemens Logistics was brought on board to partner Darroch Consulting in finalising the design concepts. Finding an operational management and control system that dovetailed with Yakka's IT systems was a key requirement, says Darroch. The new facility handles about 20 shipping containers every month and a feature of the building is extensive dock loading facilities. The interior provides storage for more than 75,000 cartons and about 30,000 products. |
| And as the company rationalised its operations into a new distribution centre it also centralised the purchasing and distribution functions, reducing the number of suppliers from 200 to 80. |
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