Raymond Sales and Service Center provides solutions to enhance productivity, efficiency. In 2002, The Container Store conducted a 10-year sales growth projection, which concluded that a larger facility would be necessary to contain its distribution center and corporate offices. Two years later, the company combined two smaller facilities into a 1.1 million-square-foot facility in Coppell, Texas.

During those two years of planning, Mike Coronado, director of distribution, and the rest of the Distribution and Logistics management team had the challenging task of designing the DC, filling it with new equipment, and getting all systems integrated and running. To accomplish this goal, The Container Store turned to Malin Integrated Handling Solutions, an authorized Raymond Sales and Service Center headquartered in Addison, Texas; a relationship that has resulted in a highly efficient facility because of Malin’s expertise and ability to provide a full range of material handling solutions to meet The Container Store’s goals.

One of The Container Store’s major initiatives was to ensure productivity and efficiency would be maintained in the new facility, even though it is 80 percent larger than the old distribution center. The Container Store wanted to mitigate increases to travel time by equipment and staff moving throughout the larger facility. By working with Malin to pay special attention to improved racking layout, improved slotting and equipment dependability, The Container Store estimates it has improved its process time by 30 percent since 2004.

Optimizing Material Flow

As The Container Store began looking to multiple companies for assistance on design and equipment consultation, Malin stood out due to its capability to provide a full system solution and much more than just lift trucks.

“Malin’s expertise made the process of planning, acquiring and maintaining our material handling equipment more simplified,” Coronado said. “Malin could provide us with a single source for a variety of equipment and services, like racking and batteries. It was a lot easier for us than negotiating with a variety of different vendors.”

The Container Store’s previous distribution centers had very narrow aisles, using turret trucks to move pallets. In the new facility, wider, 11-foot aisles allow multiple trucks for higher efficiency. Because of that change, the company needed to introduce new types of lift trucks, batteries and racking. Malin helped to design a double-deep racking system in which operators use ® trucks to maximize pallet positions.

Choosing the Right Lift Trucks

The Container Store conducted focus groups of its DC associates to test, analyze and choose the best equipment to do their jobs. Despite having years of experience with competitor-brand turret trucks, the focus groups objectively chose Raymond® lift trucks for the new facility.

The Container Store’s lift truck fleet today is composed of 51 Raymond trucks, including pallet trucks, Deep-Reach trucks, sit-down and stand-up counterbalanced trucks, Model 5500 orderpickers, and Model 8600 tow tractors.

Uptime is a premium for the company to stay efficient and cost-effective. The comprehensive Raymond Asset Protection™ maintenance agreement means a service technician from Malin is on-site daily to perform both preventive and as-needed maintenance.

In it for the Long Term

When choosing a solutions provider to help design the new facility and specify equipment of many types, The Container Store chose Malin with the intention of building a long-term relationship. The reason for Malin’s success in providing a comprehensive solution to The Container Store is its CustomCare™ warehouse optimization philosophy, a core position for Raymond and its Sales and Service Centers.

“When planning our redesign, we looked years down the road to see what partner and expert we wanted to do business with, and we felt most comfortable with Malin,” Coronado said. “This collaboration has proven to be everything we thought it would be.”

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