Nebraska Furniture Mart uses a robust automated software system

When Omaha-based Nebraska Furniture Mart (NFM) decided to go really big with its latest furniture showroom and distribution center, the company determined that there was no better location than The Colony, which is located just north of Dallas.

At nearly 2 million square feet—1.3 million of which is dedicated to a sprawling DC the size of nine football fields—NFM-Texas is living up to the notion that “everything’s bigger in Texas.”
With a 168 dock door facility the size and scope of NFM-Texas, which handles 45 to 65 inbound trailers and trucks, as well as hundreds of outbound delivery trucks every day, the company required a robust automated system.

To ensure the DC runs as efficiently as possible, managers sought the assistance of an advanced yard management and dock management software system provider. The software system not only manages a high volume of inbound and outbound trailer traffic—from NFM-Texas’s gate to 24 receiving dock doors and everything in between—but also provides a solution to efficiently process the amount of retail customer traffic flowing through the store’s 12-lane-wide, 100-plus bay product pick-up area. Nearly half of the store’s visitors prefer to take their purchased items home instead of having their items delivered.

Once a customer arrives at the pick-up area, their wait time is less than 10 minutes. The same is true even on Saturdays when the customer pick-up area typically handles 2,000 customers.

The integrated software approach at NFM-Texas includes yard management and dock management systems, an array of loading dock equipment, associated hardware and integrated security, along with numerous industrial HVLS fans.

“[In the past], we were inefficiently tracking yard equipment moves with Excel spreadsheets and white boards,” says Pat Evers, process improvement supervisor for NFM-Texas. “Based on the size of our new distribution center and projected first-year sales volume, we knew we would be receiving up to 65 trailers a day, and that simply can’t be managed using an Excel spreadsheet.”

Evers also says that growth expectations were designed into every construction planning decision. In fact, the facility can handle a lot more yard and dock activity than it currently does. Along with that level of forward thinking, NFM-Texas—from the loading docks to how the store manages time—was designed to maximize productivity.

“Labor cost is a high expense for us,” Evers says. “You have to increase your gross margins and decrease your cost of operation to remain profitable. That’s what [the software system] does for us.”

Evers adds, “Compared to our older operations, we could have never experienced the same levels of productivity that we’re now witnessing at NFM-Texas.”

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