hanping's reflection

28 November 2008 was a special day for all LOM year two students. No, it’s not LOM DAY. It’s more day a ‘bonding’ day. It’s an educational field trip to Singapore’s renowned Army Logistic Base. We get to learn new things while bonding with people from other classes as well. Killing two birds with one stone, yea?

The field trip was an eye opener for me. Not only did I get to see real life warehouse processes and distribution, I get to see their amazing state of arts-equipments/ technology that I’ve never heard before. The trip had also deepened my understanding on the subject distribution centre management.

First, we were brought to a room where there was a short power point presentation on how the Army Logistic Base operates. It was very enriching. I learnt how their automation technology enhances the logistic operations performances and productivity. It was followed by a refreshment break.

After that, we toured around their premises. Prior to the field trip, I had worked for DHL for a month and the layout with they adopted was the ‘U’ flow and because of that, I thought that there was only one type of layout. After learning Chapter 1 of DCM, I learnt that there were more than 1 type of layout, in the case of our course of study, we are only learning two of them- ‘U’ flow and ‘Through’ flow.

ALB adopted a ‘through’ flow layout. It can be clearly identified as the docks are located at opposite sides of each other.

The height of ALB building is the 10 storey high (30m) tall. This is 18.75 times taller than clarence yeo tze ming. This is the highest a warehouse can go up to and it takes a lot of hard work and cost to maintain it.

There were many types of storage systems installed in ALB. This includes conventional racking system, mobile crane, vertical carousel, pallet ASRS, bin ASRS. The mobile racking system is located at the ground floor where the main storage area is. The vertical carousel which requires temperature and humidity control is held in the medical room at level 3 where drugs are stored.
MHEs used at the inbound and outbound ALB is pallet ASRS, rack leveling, very narrow aisle (VNA) and auto palletized system. There is also a laser guided vehicle located at the consolidating (pick and pack) order area.

After the tour, we bid ALB goodbye and headed back. =)