New D&H Warehouse Extends Next-Day Shipping Reach

The new facility replaces a 30,000-square-foot facility in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and will increase Harrisburg, Pa.-based D&H's one-day shipping coverage in the Southeast by 41 percent, said Gary Brothers, D&H president.

"We know we can get deep into Atlanta now, a little into Alabama and continue to serve all of Florida with next-day shipping," Brothers said. "Next-day service is extremely important to our resellers. This allows us to improve our reach and customer base by being at a location where we can provide a larger number of customers with next-day capability."

Earlier this year, D&H doubled the size of its Chicago-based warehouse, increased its Dallas-based facility by 50 percent, expanded its Harrisburg, Pa.-based facility by 30 percent to 40 percent and added 30 percent to its Visalia, Calif.-based location, Brothers said. D&H will have 1.5 million square feet of warehouse space in its locations in 2005, up from less than 1 million square feet in 2002.

"As the business keeps growing and revenue increases, you need to improve your physical space to keep up with the business. And you need more automation to keep up with the workflow and provide the service customers come to expect from D&H," Brothers said.

D&H also is implementing a new RFID system in all its locations that will lead to paperless order processing in the warehouse and greater picking efficiency, Brothers said.

"RF allows us to process orders from a wireless standpoint, to facilitate better receiving capability [and] order throughput. It improves our overall efficiency," he said. "It's a significant upgrade to our entire system. We've done most of the programming work internally and we have significant dollars invested in this improvement."