Dematic has successfully rebuilt StarTrack’s Minchinbury distribution centre (DC) Dematic Sliding-Shoe Linear Sorter system.
StarTrack Minchinbury is the major Sydney DC supplying and delivering across the entire Sydney metropolitan area, with approximately 100,000 parcels moving through this network per day, with overnight turnaround. Minchinbury has four sorters, and every 10 years or so, the chain in the sorter reaches the end of its life and needs to be replaced.
“Continuity of operations is crucial here at StarTrack,” said Trent Jones, Facility Manager, StarTrack Minchinbury. “Every minute the sortation system is down costs us serious money, so it was important that we got a sorter rebuilt over a short period of time to ensure as little disruption as possible.”
To ensure that everything would be completed on time, the refurbishment of the Dematic Sliding-Shoe Linear Sorter was carefully planned 6-12 months in advance.
“Planning was crucial, as we had to check off numerous parts that came from America, because we could not afford to pull apart the sorter and find we were missing bits halfway through the rebuild,” said Anthony Gough, Project Manager, Dematic. “The rebuild was scheduled over a long weekend, and we got access to the sorter from 11pm on Friday night and got straight into it.”
Dematic had 15 people onsite working 12-hour shifts, so that the rebuild operated 24 hours a day due to the time restraints to get the rebuild finished and ready for live operations on Tuesday morning. The finished sorter rebuild was successfully delivered to StarTrack on time.
“We’ve very happy with the newly installed equipment, as it’s a lot quieter and has been running smoothly,” said Trent. “The collaboration between Dematic and StarTrack was excellent. There was a stringent plan in place to have the rebuild done over that short period of time, with no disruption to the workflow, and Dematic were very thorough in ensuring the rebuilt would happen on time.”