A perfect pai

Sheetz Convenience Stores' DC pairs up stretch wrappers for "drive-thru" efficiency with double-pallet jacks

Three pair of Lantech stretch wrappers team with 35 double-pallet jacks to produce 600 pallets and 26 trailer loads per day.

March 2006, Claysburg, PA - If you live west of the Mississippi river, you may never have heard of Sheetz Convenience Stores, unless you're in the "C-store" business, where this Altoona, Pennsylvania-based company is a "Hall of Fame" benchmark for the industry.

Sheetz understands speed and quality, and delivers it to customers with innovations such as touchscreen ordering of its award-winning MoToO Made-to-Order food, and creation of the "convenience restaurant," a modern, quick-casual restaurant also powered by touchscreen terminals - at the drive-through and inside.

The company applied similar "drive through" efficiency to the stretch-wrapping operations at its new (2001) DC in Claysburg, Pennsylvania.

To match the efficiency of its 35 double-pallet jacks, the company set up three pair of freestanding Lantech S-300XT overhead stretch wrappers.

"The arrangement creates a wrapping lane for the pallet jack operator to pull in parallel with the stretch wrappers, drop one pallet, pull forward a few feet, and drop the second," said John Barger, shipping supervisor for Sheetz DC.

"Combined with other technology efficiencies, such as wearable RF for our order pickers, the stretch wrapping operation has helped us deliver 13% annual increases in volume in the last two years, without an increase in hours or equipment." Sheetz's vital statistics increase almost monthly, but at the time of this writing, the company has 310 locations, 10,000 employees and $2.8 billion in annual revenue.

The family-owned business is known as a fast growing innovator, set on doubling the size of its work force (and probably everything else that implies) in the next six years.

Sheetz is ranked 87 on the Forbes list of top private companies and was named Convenience Store of the Year in 1994 and 1995, as well as inducted into the Convenience Store Hall of Fame.

The Claysburg DC spans 360,000 sq.

ft.

and employs 150, operating just 12 hours a day, six days a week to support all the retail outlets.

Pallets are staged for full-case picking with totes already on them containing cigarettes and "each pick" items for a given store, along with a packet of preprinted ship labels for cases.

The case pickers, utilizing 35 double-pallet jacks, follow directions to one of 4000 SKUs using a Symbol wrist-mounted RF display.

The RF system receives data from Retek's RDM warehouse management system.

Pickers apply preprinted labels to cased goods and ultimately bring the pallets to the stretch wrapping station.

On the advice of Lantech and a design consultant, Sheetz has arranged its S-300XT stretch wrappers to work as pairs, with two pair arranged back to back in the ambient area, and a single pair on the cold dock.

This layout allows a double pallet jack to be driven into a wrapping lane parallel to a pair of wrappers.

The operator drops one pallet pulls forward a few feet, drops the second, and then heads out to begin picking again.

A checker at the wrap station gives a final inspection to each load, pulls a lanyard to initiate the wrap cycle, then takes the two loads to a staging area for the truck loaders.

The Lantech S-300XT machine is "almost" an automatic stretch wrapper that requires nothing more from the operator than a pull on the lanyard.

The machine automatically attaches the film to the pallet, then cuts it at the end of the cycle.

Designed for tall and unstable loads, the freestanding S-300XT is ideal for arranging in side-by-side pairs that eliminate double handling of loads normally required with a single machine.

The 12-RPM wrap arm allows each machine to produce 30-40 loads per hour, up to 80 inches high, wrapped with two layers of film, prestretched 200% with Power Roller-Stretch.

Automatic load-height detection adjusts film overlap to meet requirements for Sheetz's varying loads, which range from knee-high to the maximum the wrapper can produce.

Sheetz uses a 70-ga.

film from Sigma, supplied by Unisource.

Variable wrap force on the machines allows the operator to adjust for unstable loads or soft products.

"When we opened, we did a lot of hand wrapping before we got these machines on line, and had some issues with loads shifting in the trailer," said Barger.

"That ceased as soon as we went to machine wrapping".

"The pairing of these wrappers is an exceptionally efficient layout for the double-pallet jacks".

"We initially had the wrappers separated, but paired them up and added machines in 2003".

"This improved our productivity to meet growing volume requirements during the next few years, without adding equipment".

"Our output at this facility is growing at the rate of about 13% per year, and we're currently producing 600 pallet loads - 26 tractor trailer loads - per day, working six 12-hour days".

"In addition, we've even been visited by Pat Lancaster, founder of Lantech, who accompanied one of his service techs on a call".

"Pat gave us some helpful advice and came up with a few ideas to improve the performance of the machines.".

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