The Shield 4th Quarter 2012 USCS Building in Big D · PDF fileThe Shield 4th Quarter 2012 United States Cold Storage USCS Building in Big D The Shield 4th Quarter 2012 y y Page 2...

The Shield 4th Quarter 2012

United States Cold Storage

USCS Building in Big D


y

y

Page 2

President’s MessageTime to Reflect, Review. Look Ahead State of the Industry

Page 5

Employee NewsRaj ChapaRala joins UsCs’ i.T. GRoUp GReG RohRbaUGh To lead UsCs WilminGTon

Page 4

State of the Industry cont. James Hughes Hallet Honoured

Page 6

Warehouse OperationsQ&A with Luis Guardiola, Vice President Area Manager – Laredo, TX

Page 7

Transportation & LogisticsTransportation Growing in Turlock

Page 8

EngineeringUSCS’ Next Steps in Energy Management

United States Cold Storage is construct-ing a 5.5 million-cubic-foot, public

refrigerated warehouse in Dallas. Scheduled for completion next April, the new Phase I project will include two convertible freez-ers (+35°F to -20°F), and two more freezers (0°F to -20°F). It will replace most of USCS’ original Dallas warehouse, which was built in 1965.

“We have been operating at maximum capacity for the past several years,” says USCS Dallas General Manager Brian Kroll. “This gives USCS the opportunity to provide even more storage space—for both existing and future customers—in an ever-growing market. Our customers’ products will be housed in a state-of-the-art warehouse with the very latest in engineering, refrigeration, lighting, WMS, and TMS technology.”

USCS Dallas handles a broad range of fin-ished goods including soups, sauces, pota-toes, pastries, ice cream and raw materials. For the record, a portion of the original facil-ity and an adjacent Halifax Street operation will remain open.

Officials note that USCS Dallas’ new location will have six 42-pallet blast cells

operating at -58°F. The building also will have a temperature-controlled dock (21 doors) with site capacity for two expansions. The site has rail accessibility although rail service won’t be added until later. It is located at the intersection of Cockrell Hill Road and Interstate 30, just five miles west of downtown Dallas.

“We are virtually at the crossroads of all ma-jor highways, covering all directions com-ing in and out of the Dallas-Ft. Worth area,” notes Brian.

With that, he turns his attention to the new building’s operations.

“The CO2 cascade refrigeration system will be one of the biggest assets,” he says. The CO2 cascade refrigeration system will utilize hot gas defrost—in lieu of electric defrost—and this will allow the refrigeration to operate even more efficiently. The new blast freezer design also will facilitate significantly shorter freeze times and this will be a win-win for both USCS and our customers. We also will be able to provide a drop-trailer program for our customers as well as on-site route truck parking.” u

Page 3

What’s New at USCSFresno Honors Three Tulare Turkey Trot Medley’s Day of Fun


President’s Message

2

David Harlan, President & CEO

Time to Reflect, Review, Look Ahead.

Although it’s hard to believe we’ve arrived at the fourth-quarter Shield,

this is a great time to reflect on the past and to look forward to the upcoming year. In summary, I’ll note that we entered 2012 with strong business activity and good occupancy levels. I’m pleased to report that we enjoyed these conditions at most locations throughout the entire year.

One issue and concern I addressed in my last article involved some service issues related to crowded conditions in one of our Midwest warehouses. I’m pleased to report that customer service has returned to

acceptable levels and we have successfully reduced overtime hours. Meanwhile, we will soon complete an addition to our Wilmington, IL, warehouse that not only will further improve the situation but also provide for continued customer growth.

I’d like to thank all our customers for their loyalty through a difficult period and I want to especially acknowledge all the workers who endured long hours to solve a very demanding situation.

I’m pleased to report that our 3 million-cubic-foot addition in Hazleton, PA,—completed in September—already is filling up quickly. The management team has done an excellent job of recruiting and training new workers and we continue to make progress in developing these employees to meet US Cold standards.

After attending an IARW Southwest Chap-ter meeting in Dallas, I took the opportunity to tour our facilities in Ft. Worth, Arlington and Dallas and also visit the construction site for our new Dallas warehouse. I am

pleased to report that the project is going well and we look forward to opening this state-of-the-art warehouse in 2013.

Fortunately, this trip coincided with our annual outing for employees and their families at the three area warehouses. I enjoyed the opportunity to meet most of our employees’ families and to thank them for their loyal support of US Cold Storage.

At this time of year, we’re heavily involved in planning and budgeting and I’m pleased to say that our facility and regional managers are optimistic for the coming year. We are in the planning stages for several additions and new locations and we continue to focus on growing our third-party logistics, transportation and consulting services.

I sincerely want to thank our employees for another great year and to thank our loyal customers who make all of this pos-sible. I wish each of you a safe and happy holiday season and a healthy and prosper-ous new year. u

State of the IndustryUSCS’ President David Harlan is serving this year as chairman of the industry’s largest trade organization, the International Association of Refrigerated Warehouses (IARW). Here, the Shield asks Dave for some exclusive “state-of-the-industry” insights.

Q: How did the public refrigerated warehousing industry change dur-ing 2012? What were a few critical themes or developments?

Dave Harlan: One theme has involved a focus on sustainability. Larry Rauch (Presi-dent, Los Angeles Cold Storage and Chair-man, World Food Logistics Organization) and I agreed that it’s an important topic for both industry associations. We also real-ize—as corporate leaders—that our com-panies have to be good corporate citizens. Moreover, it’s a theme that cuts across the industry itself as we look at positive new

ways to embrace innovation, technology and product handling.

Another big change involves a greater focus on automation. Historically, it’s worked – for obvious reasons—in some dedicated operations (involving limited products or SKUs). However, it’s come to the point where it not only is more affordable but it also is more flexible and can deliver a good return on investment. Before, you could design a system that would work but the return on investment wasn’t there. Now it’s getting to a point where it makes “dollars and sense.”

Thirdly, we’ve seen increased focus on transportation and the need to put inventory in the right place. Transportation availabil-

Cou

rtes

y of

Inte

rnat

iona

l Ass

ocia

tion

of R

efri

gera

ted

War

ehou

ses

continued on page 4

The Shield 4th Quarter 2012 3

What’s New at USCS

When you work in the cold, sometimes it good to go outside on a hot summer’s day. That’s just what USCS Medley, FL, employees did for their 2012 annual picnic. “Neither hurricanes nor thunderstorms would keep the US Cold Storage Medley team from enjoying its annual picnic,” says General Manager Alex Gonzalez. Medley marked the afternoon with barbeque and desserts as well as games, contests, raffles, team sports (including a tug of war) and even a bounce-house for kids.

Race Against Hunger: Five USCS Tulare (CA) South warehouse employees and their family members joined more than 4,500 runners and walkers in a Thanksgiving morning Turkey Trot, in support of the 8th annual “Race Against Hunger” and the Visalia Emergency Aid Council. USCS participants included (back row): Jennifer Hulsey, Tim Martinez, David Cardoza; and (front row) Emma Hulsey, Jessica Quijano and Rhonda Willis.

USCS Fresno Honors Three

L to R: John Bodden III, Javier Sesate, Rod Noll and Louie Rodriguez

L to R: John Bodden III, John Carlson

Great things come in three’s: like three USCS employees celebrating their 30-year work anniversaries.

Celebrating their 30-year work anniversaries were USCS Fresno employees John Carlson, Javier Sesate and Louie Rodriguez. USCS hired all three when Fresno expanded the warehouse in the early 1980s.

“All three of these long-term USCS employees have made important contributions to make our Fresno location what it is today,” says John Bodden III, USCS Fresno General Manager. “Each man has demonstrated loyalty and commitment and each one has been crucial to the USCS Fresno’s success and growth. Congratulations to our 30-year employees and thank you for the many years of hard work and dedication given to United States Cold Storage.”

John notes that John Carlson has spent all 30 years helping USCS Fresno grow. Javier Sesate transferred to USCS Dinuba (CA) and worked there several years before returning to his original home warehouse in Fresno. Louie Rodriguez started his career in Fresno and later transferred to Lavergne, TN. Louie returned to Fresno af-ter several years to help prepare for the new facility built in 2007. u

Tulare Turkey Trot

Medley’s Day of Fun


State of the IndustryUSCS Tracy Welcomes Amy’s Kitchenity and cost are key concerns when it comes to locating and designing a distribution net-work. Our customers – and their custom-ers, too – are getting better at managing inventories. This has reduced order quan-tities and resulted in smaller order sizes and more case picking. This development increases the value of freight consolidation. Truly, as transportation costs increase, the process of locating and designing a distri-bution system all becomes more important.

Q: Can you elaborate about your last point? What’s driving those changes?

Dave: The transportation sector has been facing energy cost increases and driver shortages, particularly for long-haul routes. Just changing those variables has more customers thinking, “Maybe we need more inventory closer to the customer.” This decision affects the shipment volumes, order sizes, pounds per mile, etc. You have to improve these areas when your transportation costs are rising relative to warehousing.

Q: Has anything surprised you during the past year?

Dave: I’d point to advancements in auto-mation. Again, it’s not just about what the technology can do – but at what cost. Those two areas seem to have come together.

Q: As IARW chairman, you have attended IARW’s regional chapter meetings. What’s been your take-away from those events?

Dave: Those regional chapter meetings were focused largely on the same issues, including technologies, new products and energy savings. They also have been exam-ining issues related to employee satisfac-tion. If we want to grow as an industry, we need to hire the right people and know how to encourage and retain them. These are all big topics.

IARW’s emphasis on sustainability in-cludes this greater focus on employees—

as we look more closely at sustaining the business. We’re discussing employee mo-rale and issues such as wellness programs and benefit packages that yield the best benefits at a fair cost. We’re looking at sus-tainability as not just energy, recycling or other hard measures but also from a more holistic perspective.

Meanwhile, we also are looking even more broadly at our customers and some of the sustainability angles related to the products and industries we work with. This includes seafood and other critical commodities. We’re asking IARW’s scientific advisors to prepare more information for us at IARW’s annual convention.

I must add that there’s been a great atmosphere of camaraderie between all regional chapter meeting participants. You have many different companies represented and their professionals have shared best practices to improve the industry as a whole. People realize that we have to grow the [industry] pie, as a whole and make third-party warehousing a better option than private warehousing. It’s important to grow and everybody wins when you share great ideas.

Q: Considering your perspective on the broader industry, how would you describe USCS’ core strengths?

Dave: Our core strength is that we have tremendous staff at all levels. We enjoy excellent employee retention and our people are improving their skills. We’ve focused heavily on training and development and we’re seeing some real returns and benefits. We will continue our investment in training as we bring people from all parts of the country together to share best practices.

Here’s an example. We have been growing, expanding and opening new warehouses. As we’ve developed new customer pro-grams and opened new buildings, we’ve exposed more employees to these pro-cesses and had more volunteers—from all around the country—come to help. Not

Chairman Honoured

Swire Group Chairman, James Hughes-Hallett

Swire group Chairman, James Hughes-Hallett, has been appointed a Com-

panion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (CMG) for services to British business interests in Asia and Australasia in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List. u

only does this teamwork better resolve problems but it also helps prevent other is-sues that might have occurred.

Q: What else can you say about USCS’ growth and future opportunities?

Dave: We’re expecting more significant growth during the next five years. In ad-dition to opening new space, we continue to look at acquisition opportunities. Mean-while, our transportation department has become a real growth business for us. We continue to bring more human resources and technologies to that area. It is paying great dividends for us and we expect it to continue.

Finally, I’ll note that we are looking at ways to expand within the Western Hemi-sphere, outside the United States. We will look at opportunities to grow in Canada, Mexico and South America. Yet it has to be the right opportunity with enough “crit-ical mass” in the area to make sense. u

continued from page 2


Employee News

Greg Rohrbaugh to lead USCS Wilmington

Congratulations to Lake City Staff

Greg Rohrbaugh

United States Cold Storage is pleased to welcome Greg Rohrbaugh as General

Manager for USCS Wilmington, IL.

“I feel very fortunate to have Greg Rohr- baugh in this position,” says David Butterfield, USCS Vice President and Area Manager-Midwest. “He brings an abun-dance of management skills, knowledge and creativity to Wilmington to comple-ment our existing team.”

Greg joins the company with 21 years of industry experience and he most recently served as a regional general manager for Americold Logistics’ Pennsylvania facilities.

This Fall found Greg and his wife relocat-ing to the Chicago area.

“I joined U.S. Cold because of the culture,” Greg says. “This company has a great repu-tation and a lot of talented people. I wanted to be a part of that. My wife and I are very much looking forward to getting to know the team in Wilmington!”u

United States Cold Storage is pleased to welcome Raj Chaparala to the

company’s information technology group in Voorhees, NJ. He assumes a newly created position as a senior staff programmer.

“Please join me in welcoming Raj,” says Srini Gudipati, USCS Systems Development Manager.

“Raj holds a Bachelor of Science degree from a prestigious engineering university

Raj Chaparala Joins USCS’ I.T. Group

Raj Chaparala

in India and comes to us with more than 15 years of I.T. programming and management experience on iSeries platforms.”

Raj previously held various positions in programming and management at Cognizant Technology Solutions and, more recently, Bally Technologies. In his new position, Raj will work with USCS’ internal users and customers on EDI; Lawson; and all other Java-based applications including e-USCOLD, TMS and e-WMS.

“I’m looking forward to be a part of our WMS modernization and the opportunity to work on Java technologies,” says Raj. “I also wanted to return to supply chain management, which was my domain at Cognizant.”

He continues “I want to gain functional expertise in third-party logistics and apply that knowledge to improving USCS’ warehouse management system. I’m also excited to share my software development practices and knowledge with USCS’ I.T. team.”

Raj, welcome to the USCS family! u

USCS Lake City, FL, employees enjoyed a celebratory end-of-summer luncheon. “We appreciate everyone’s hard work and dedication,” says General Manager Paul Boartfield. As reported earlier, the four-year-old site won Gorton’s annual “Warehouse of the Year” honor for 2012. Congratulations once again Lake City! y


Warehouse Operations

Operations – Area Insights

Luis Guardiola V.P. Area Manager – Laredo, TX

Q: How has USCS Laredo’s export business (into Mexico and beyond) changed during 2012? Why?

Luis: We increased our handling of refrigerated products such as cheese, deli-meat and prepared foods; and increased our handling of non-refrigerated items such as food ingredients and powder milk. On the frozen side, we remained consistent with previous years’ volumes.

The new refrigerated and non-refrigerated business led us to offer more services. For example, we are applying Spanish language labels stating nutritional facts, cooking instructions, ingredients, etc. Mexican labeling laws require these on U.S. exports coming into the country.

Q: How about Laredo’s import-related business. How has that changed?

Luis: We’ve seen increases in imported frozen and fresh meats as well as fruit and vegetables, everything from berries and mangos to tomatoes and avocados. These customers are requesting more cross-dock services.

Q: You’ve already mentioned several service improvements. Any other facility or technology upgrades worth mentioning?

Luis: We have recently upgraded our facilities’ security systems strictly con-trolling access to our property and warehouses. Security is a major concern with our customers, particularly because everyone wants to comply with the trade demands to meet C-TPAT standards.

Q: What’s one thing most customers probably don’t realize about Laredo?

Luis: The Port of Laredo is the No. 1 U.S. Customs district that trades with Mexico. Our port processes 10,000 trucks per day and is the sixth largest U.S. Custom district with total trade dollars estimated at $216 billion. It’s ranked just behind the ports of New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Detroit and New Orleans.

Q: What was Laredo’s biggest challenge during 2012? How did you address that?

Luis: The biggest challenge has been to manage labor efficiently. Our customers’ growing business has us handling more un-scheduled trailers every day. We also have to ensure all regulatory requirements are met on all imported and exported products and this affects dock space utilization for inspections.

I’d say that during the last two years, we’ve addressed both issues by expanding our hours of operation to accommodate un-scheduled trailers and better utilize dock space.

The Shield talks with Luis Guardiola, Vice President and Area Manager-Laredo, TX. A 39-year company veteran, Luis oversees the business and operations of two multi-temp sites in Laredo.

Q: Looking back on 2012, what are you most proud of?

Luis: I’m proud of our warehouse management staff and employees. They were very receptive to our adjustments in work schedule and hours of operation to meet our customers’ needs.

Q: Any other significant operations news?

Luis: Mexico filed an anti-dumping suit against the U.S. poultry industry and we’re keeping an eye on a final decision in that case. This could adversely affect exports to Mexico, as duties are applied on other import/export commodities. u

USCS Harrisonburg, VA Greets, Treats Drivers

USCS Harrisonburg, VA celebrated Truck Driver Appreciation Week with goodies and hats for drivers. Harrisonburg also hung a large banner to welcome drivers. A special bulletin board map also let drivers indicate how far they had traveled from home.


Trans Program Keeps Rolling, Growing in Turlock

Want to get a transportation program rolling at your warehouse? It may

not be as difficult as you think. Just ask Chris Harrington, General Manager at USCS Turlock (CA).

Then again, success does require the right positioning (location) and a passion to help customers optimize transportation opportunities.

First there’s positioning. USCS knew what it was doing when it built Turlock in 2009 and located the warehouse less than 20 miles from two major customers’ production facilities. In tandem, Chris says the Turlock team knew there would be an immediate opportunity to start a USCS Transport shuttle program. “Initially, we only supported one of our ma-jor customers and handled all of their raw material and production transfers to and from outside storage,” says Chris. “Within 18 months, we then were able to secure all of that customer’s production volumes.”

He continues, “Our customers have always been interested in assistance with intra-state volumes. This interest and the eventual implementation with USCS Logistics helped us to become a one-stop solution for most transport needs and ultimately led to opportunities developing for multi-

vendor consolidation. At the same time, it provided additional transport routes for USCS Transport, as we’ve assisted our customer base with localized delivery options.”

What problems do your customers have? What issues are they trying to solve? It’s here that Chris talks about going after opportunities with a passion for USCS to be a broader solutions provider.

“Initially, as we started from one customer, we quickly realized that we had to take advantage of every potential opportunity. Every load that either arrived or departed from our facility was seen as a gained or lost opportunity,” he says. “Through this approach, we have been able to garner business across all transportation platforms. By making service our primary focus, we were able to differentiate ourselves from our competition.”

Behind the scenes, Turlock transportation specialists analyze customers’ outbound order sets to identify all commonalities. This helps the team more quickly identify new service opportunities. Yet it’s one thing to identify opportunities – and quite another – to develop action plans.

“Most importantly, we moved to assisting customers with quick and timely solutions,”

says Chris. “By being ‘easily scalable’ we can react and take advantage of these op-portunities. We have been able to recognize and utilize the benefits of being an in-house transportation provider by capitalizing on the coordination with warehouse operations and scheduling. This has been a huge part – not only our transportation successes – but also our warehouse success. We’ve not only boosted volumes not in Turlock but other regional USCS operations.”

Chris quickly shifts the focus for Turlock’s success to the facility’s drivers and trans-portation officials.

“I truly want to recognize our drivers and, specifically, Peter Espinoza, our Transpor-tation Coordinator, for their active involve-ment and energy in seeing our program grow,” says Chris. “Our group’s energy re-ally has made all this happen.”

Talking about warehouse success, Turlock also recently completed a 3.5-million-cubic-foot Phase Two expansion last December. Chris concludes, “Through the success of USCS Transport and USCS Logistics, cus-tomers have become confident in our abili-ties and this has allowed us to begin con-sidering more multi-vendor consolidation programs, even on a national scale.” u

Transportation & Logistics


USCS’ Next Steps in Energy Management

Please let us hear from you.Send story suggestions to Lisa Mullins [email protected]. For pictures, we welcome prints,color slides or computer graphics in jpeg form (300 dpi).

UNITED STATES COLD STORAGE, INC.Four Echelon Plaza201 Laurel Rd., Suite 400Voorhees, NJ 08043Tel: 856.354.8181 Fax: 856.772.1876E-mail: [email protected]

PRSRT STDU.S. POSTAGE

P A I DHAYWARD, CAPERMIT #3335

Engineering

USCS uses advanced refrigeration controls to provide some facilities

with more opportunity and flexibility to automatically take advantage of real-time pricing through “Economic Response” programs. Unlike “Demand Response,” which is to offset high grid demand, Economic Response programs occur hourly. USCS can establish an economic point (eg, a real-time price) at which it would curtail some electricity usage.

USCS Project Engineer Dan Dietrich says USCS has established two beta sites in Milford, DE, and Arlington, TX, to test the functionality of software upgrades that automatically adjust the refrigeration system once an economic level has been established by the grid operator. Although potential energy saving rebate payments will be less (than those offered by Demand Response grid operators), these Economic Response rebates will be more frequent and

enable USCS to build upon its success with Demand Response programs.

“These (Economic Response) programs are becoming popular because of increased incentives by utilities to increase the efficiency of the electricity grid by balancing user consumption to the generation load,” says Dan. “The purpose of balancing the grid is to avoid the utilization of temporary peaking generation plants and the construction of costly new

generation plants for short periods of high energy utilization. With more utilities, both regulated and deregulated, implementing time-of-use (TOU) electricity pricing, electricity end users will become the future administrators of demand response.”

Dan notes that all new facilities—including Dallas and Omaha, NE—will have new automated demand response features included in their refrigeration controls package. Meanwhile, hardware from Energy Connect (Johnson Controls) will be installed soon in Milford for beta testing. This will enable USCS to participate in auto-demand response, although not a “price-signal” management program, for the time being.

“We’re scheduled to introduce that (price-signal) feature in 2014 once we’ve perfected the automated shutdown sequencing in our refrigeration control software,” says Dan. u

Joe Tyler,Chief Engineer, Milford, DE

The Shield 4th Quarter 2012 USCS Building in Big D · PDF fileThe Shield 4th Quarter 2012 United States Cold Storage USCS Building in Big D The Shield 4th Quarter 2012 y y Page 2...

Documents