Gideon Hillman Consulting are delighted to be a crucial part of the team responsible for its clients Bodybuilding.com to be finalists for this year’s SHD awards in the New Facility Category for their European efulfilment centre.
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Bodybuilding.com is the world’s largest e-tailer for Sports Supplements, with headquarters in Boise, Idaho USA, supplying 10m customers worldwide through its Distribution network.

The UK represents approximately 30% of Bodybuilding.com European business and the company opened its first European Distribution Centre in Dunstable in 2015, immediately improving order fulfilment times.

Bodybuilding.com decided to move its European Distribution Centre from the third party facility in The Netherlands into its own ‘in-house’ facility in the UK in 2015, very much like a number of facilities they already operated themselves throughout the USA. The 42,000 sq ft facility includes a pedestrian zone pick operation where orders are picked to tote bins from carton live flow racking and then taken by pick trolleys and put onto the conveyor to the packing area where orders are taken from the totes, packed into Bodybuilding.com boxes and then passed through to the automatic packing and sealing area.

A secondary conveyor takes the packed orders to the goods out despatch area whilst a third conveyor returns the empty totes to the picking area.

The bulk replenishment stock is held in pallet locations above the carton live pick face and lifted down in the replenishment aisles where the carton live system is continually backfilled.
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The whole design is based around the principle of short pick distances and minimal pick times enabling it to run 24 hours per day, seven days per week with as few as 40 operators receiving, picking, packing and despatching in excess of 95,000 order per week, as well as stock replenishment, product returns and goods in.

This prime example clearly demonstrates the benefits of a design for purpose e-fulfilment distribution centre, the specific operational requirements for ecommerce and the speed and volume at which orders can be processed with relatively low staff levels.

Caroline Underwood, Vice President of Operations, Bodybuilding.com has this to say about their chosen UK specialist support and the project team as a whole: “Gideon Hillman Consulting and the team there have been a terrific support throughout the entire project of getting the UK Fulfilment Centre up and running. The timelines we had were very tight, but they worked tirelessly with us to select the right providers to deliver the right solutions that we were looking for as a business to get this Fulfilment Centre up and running. Throughout the process they worked with us through the ups and down, we had some challenges along the way, but our Project Manager, Phillip Beckham, was available 24/7 to help us to get the Fulfilment Centre up and running. We thoroughly enjoyed working with GH and I look forward to working with them again in the future.

“Ultimately, the most important thing for us is that every package from Bodybuilding.com makes the customer say wow”!

For more details, contact info@hillman-consulting.co.uk or 01926 430 883 or visit our website www.hillman-consulting.co.uk

GIDEON HILLMAN

Tel: 01926 430 883

Email: info@hillman-consulting.co.uk

www.hillman-consulting.co.uk

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