Background
When Rommel Gamez, lead inventory control specialist, started with the company, Stauffer was set up to manage three incoming tractor trailer shipments per day. Each of those containers—which took about six hours to unload and unpack—housed roughly 40 smaller containers of PPE.
“Any of those smaller containers could include a ‘super cluster’ of about 30 different items,” Gamez explains. Those individual items are rarely sorted or grouped before being packed in the containers, which means Stauffer’s team members had to lay out up to 10 different pallets on the floor and then pick from the cases to load those pallets. This had to happen for every container being delivered by tractor trailer.
When Stauffer’s business picked up as a result of the global pandemic and high demand for PPE, the company’s inbound freight operations got overwhelmed pretty quickly. “We were getting bombarded by containers,” Gamez says. After looking around for a solution, he and the company’s VP of supply chain watched a video demonstration of Destuff-it™ on YouTube.
The Solution
“We decided that we had to test out Destuff-it™,” said Gamez. After a short trial period, the company decided to put the equipment in place in January 2021. “The equipment was ready to use and it was the perfect solution to our problem,” he added. “In fact, Destuff-it™ has cut our unloading time in half.”
The portable ergonomic conveyor solution also helps Stauffer better manage the mixed loads of product that it receives via truckload on a daily basis. “We use it with every container that comes in,” said Gamez. Just one person manages the unloading and no longer has to lift heavy containers and carry them out to the warehouse floor for palletizing. Instead, the entire case is slid onto a belt and moved into place.
Today, Stauffer lines up 14 total pallets—seven on each side—and numbers them accordingly. Cases can be placed right on the pallets in order for faster sorting and putaway in the warehouse. Workers no longer have to do their unpacking, moving and sorting in the back of the truck; that all happens inside the building now.
“Destuff-it™ helped us take a disorganized system and made it much easier to manage,” said Gamez, “while also cutting down on all of the lifting and significantly reducing the time it takes for us to
unload a truck.”