Performance Food Group (PFG) is one of the leading food service distributors in the US, delivering food and food related products to over 130,000 independent and national chain restaurants, schools and institutions. Their growing and extremely busy Little Rock, AR, facility faced major capacity and material handling challenges with no immediate plans for expansion. Those challenges included: Extensive Rack Damage – The distribution center had close to 3,000 pallet positions of damaged 2-deep, roll-formed drive-in rack. Confined in a small cooler with narrow aisles, the lower frame sections were severely bashed and bent due to constant forklift abuse. Despite several rack repair efforts, PFG was concerned that the system posed a safety hazard to their employees. They needed a stronger, abuse-resistant alternative. The Need for Pick Faces for Cooler SKU’s – PFG faced a common foodservice challenge; how to effectively accommodate increasing SKU requirements. This was definitely the case with their cooler products category, where they needed to find several additional floor level pick faces within their existing footprint. E-Distribution proposed a used, or like-new, Frazier 2-deep push-back system to replace the existing roll-formed drive-in. Knowing that budget and durability were top priorities, used structural push-back offered the ideal alternative; structural steel is far more abuse-resistant than roll-formed and capable of withstanding the extensive forklift abuse of a busy foodservice facility. Push-back also offers added productivity by delivering pallets directly to the aisle face vs. drive-in which requires the forklift to drive into the system to retrieve the 2nd pallet. A creative and cost-effective solution was developed by PFG and the E-Distribution teams to add lower level pick faces. The floor level was already used for case-pick selection with reserve pallet storage above. E-Distribution added shelf beams and wire decking to create an extra single deep shelf level directly […]