Five questions with David DeLong,
Associate Director of Logistics
Q: What is the vision with opening the new distribution center (DC)?
A: We want to ensure that we can provide the best possible service and products to our customers. The new DC in Wellsville, NY does a few things for us:
• Creates a centralized point between our manufacturing and our project sites to store and ship products from, simplifying our process.
• It allows us to evolve our storage footprint to align with our business growth. Storing components from foundations to racking in a quality environment ensures long term reliability for our products.
• We will continue to review the overall network and what makes the most sense for our business. Wellsville is a great first step in the process that will allow Terrasmart to provide best in class service to our customers in the years to come.
Q: How does this new distribution center benefit customers?
A: We want to ship on time and in full. We understand that project delays are one of the biggest challenges for our customers; this new DC gives us more control and avoids complications for our partners. Providing diversified site storage allows us to increase the number of daily loads going out to project sites while still maintaining reliability and accuracy. We also have added flexibility to scale during peak seasons and respond quickly to changing customer needs.
Q: How many projects can the new distribution center support?
A: Our 100K sq ft facility in NY supports 40MW+ of tracker projects at any given time. This gives us the ability to stage and ship large scale projects from a single location.
Q: What are the results since opening the new distribution center?
A: Right now, our on-time delivery (OTD) is tracking at 95% for March, April, and May, with a goal of 98%+. We are 98% stocked and have delivered 42 projects on time and in full since we opened.
Q: Now that the DC is up and running, what’s next?
A: At Terrasmart we’re always looking for ways to improve our customer experience. We will continue to evolve the overall logistics team with a focus on several areas:
1. Longer range planning: Our goal is to evolve our planning cycle so that we’re able to anticipate demand spikes months in advance and ensure consistent delivery to our customers.
2. Continued evolution of our logistics network: Wellsville was an important first step, but we will continue to review our capabilities, locations, and logistics spheres to ensure we minimize cost while maximizing service and reliability. As we expand our business, we will look to expanding our network as needed. More to come on this over the next several months!
3. Review other areas of opportunity: Our transportation model is fulfilling its purpose for the time being, but we will be reviewing our processes to see where it makes sense to make changes. Anything from establishing set routes and carriers to looking at dedicated fleet options or even reviewing what our future state delivery methodology will be. This is not a short-term thing, but anything and everything is on the table—if it makes sense and provides us with better cost, service, and reliability.
