On Wednesday October 12th, 2016 CMHDS members toured the London Drugs Distribution Service Centre in Richmond, B.C.
The 419,000 sq.ft. facility services all of London Drugs 78 stores in Western Canada, carries 78,000 SKU’s and employs 340 people. Facility features include over 100 pieces of material handling equipment, almost 5km of conveyor, a Vocollect Voice Pick system and a Remstar/Nova Carousel Pick system. The tour was a rare opportunity to go behind the scenes at one of Canada’s retail success stories.
About London Drugs
One of Canada’s largest retail chains, London Drugs was founded in 1945 as a small drugstore in Vancouver, British Columbia by Sam Bass. Today, London Drugs has stores in more than 35 major markets throughout British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. The pharmacy is still the heart of their business, but today they also offer a full service computer department, cosmetics ranging from lip gloss to high-end face creams, furniture, cameras, high quality photo finishing, cordless phones and plasma televisions. More people buy their small appliances at London Drugs than any other place in Western Canada.
About The LD Distribution Service Centre (DSC)
- 373,600 sq.ft. building with 45,400 sq.ft. mezzanine which gives 419,000 sq.ft. of working area including 15,000 sq.ft. of offices and maintenance space.
- Docks: 16 Shipping, 20 Receiving, 3 Express Receiving/Shipping
- Service Area ? serving all 78 stores in the chain covering BC (51 stores), Alberta (22 stores), Saskatchewan (4 stores) and Manitoba (1 store).
- 40,000 pallet locations on site
- 13,000 pallet locations in Annacis storage facility
- 17,000 less-than-pallet case storage locations
- 15,000 split-case pick locations in carousel, flow, and static shelving systems
- Over 100 million pounds of freight handled in/out annually
- 40-50 store orders processed daily, between 500 ? 1500 order lines per store order
- All stores receive pharmacy orders daily, 6 days per week
- RF terminals used through-out the DSC, primarily to manage inventory and move products between locations within the DSC
- Bar-code/scanner technology throughout to ID/track locations, products and activitiesConveyor supported pick systems including pick lines, accumulating conveyors, two sortation conveyors, gravity conveyor, cardboard trash conveyors (4.92 km of conveyor)
- Vocollect voice picking system
- Remstar/Nova carousel pick system
- 22 narrow aisle reach trucks, 19 counterbalance list trucks, 5 man-up OPRs, 60 rider pallet jacks, single and double pallet capacity, 2 Quick Pic Remote
- Back-up power supplied by two 750 KW generators