"Daylighting" brightens up energy picture
Federated Logistics & Operations
By James Cooke -- Logistics Management, 6/1/2004
When workers complained about insufficient lighting in Federated Logistics & Operations' warehouse, the company listened. And when it took action to address those complaints, Federated not only improved conditions for its employees, but it also saved money on its annual energy costs.
Federated Logistics & Operations is the distribution arm of Federated Department Stores, which owns national retail chains such as Macy's and Bloomingdale's. To serve its stores, Federated operates several distribution centers, including a 1.8 million square-foot DC in East Los Angeles. There, more than 400 employees work in two shifts. The facility houses a furniture division, a small-ticket item division, and a returns center. It ships between 30,000 and 40,000 cartons a day of small-ticket items, the busiest unit in terms of shipping activity.
Two years ago, employees in the furniture department complained that the fluorescent lighting in the East L.A. warehouse did not allow for proper color rendition, a situation that resulted in customer complaints and product returns. The main reason for those complaints, says Daryl Meadows, director of West Coast maintenance, was that the fluorescent illumination caused fabric colors to appear differently than they did in natural light. As a result, consumers returned furniture that didn't exactly match the colors they saw in the retail showroom. In other cases, workers who were touching up or staining wood weren't able to meet customers' color specifications.
Those complaints prompted Meadows to look into retrofitting the warehouse with natural lighting. He opted for tubular skylights from Solatube International, a Vista, Calif.-based manufacturer. Solatube originally made its 21-inch-diameter skylights for the home-improvement market and had only recently begun marketing that product for commercial buildings.
Last year, Federated installed more than 800 of the tubular skylights in the roof of the East Los Angeles facility, as shown in the accompanying photo. The skylights have indeed improved the ability of the furniture division's employees to discern different shades of color. But the practice of "daylighting"—switching to natural illumination through the use of skylights—has brought another benefit as well.
Unless it's cloudy, the lights are turned off in the morning and don't come back on until five o'clock. "It's so bright I don't turn the lights on in the day," Meadows says. That has significantly cut electricity consumption, and Meadows notes that his company spent 10 percent less on energy last year than it did two years ago.
"Lighting is a major utility expense," Meadows observes, and that 10-percent savings has prompted Federated to consider switching to natural lighting in its other distribution centers. The company has already begun retrofitting its Hayward, Calif. distribution center with 500-plus skylights.
"Daylighting" has improved workers' productivity, cut utility costs, and made the East L.A. distribution center brighter inside. Yet because artificial lighting has been the standard in warehouses for so long, the use of natural light usually surprises visitors. "Vendors are shocked to hear that there is not a single electric light on when they come inside our facility," Meadows says.
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