June 2017

Plant Support Keeps the Focus on Manufacturing

By Sean Kelley, Vice President of Business Development

It’s great to see manufacturing on the rise across so many industries, especially automotive, infrastructure, construction, and consumer goods. With the economy trending upward, companies are making capital investments, consumer spending is up, and economic development is booming in many regions.

With this increase in demand comes a need for companies to look within and make adjustments to ensure they are running at optimal levels. This means looking at areas where they might be able to create efficiencies such as expanding manufacturing capabilities and moving warehouse capacity to a third-party. This is where a 3PL can make a big impact by providing plant support services.

Plant Support, or manufacturing support, is outsourcing some or all of the support needed to operate a manufacturing facility. It can take many different shapes, such as inbound container flow, raw materials storage, finished goods storage, inventory management, kitting, and distribution. In addition, by utilizing shared resources such as warehouse footprint, forklifts, and labor, they can reduce operating costs.

To help you get a better idea of our plant support services, check out these three scenarios where our clients were able to increase capacity, keep pace with growth, and operate lean manufacturing facilities.

Increased Capacity

A coatings manufacturer client that stores raw material with us was struggling to fill orders quickly enough for customers out of their manufacturing facility after an acquisition. An analysis of their production plant revealed that finished goods storage had become a big bottleneck in their process. Without relieving this strain on the operation, they would continue to lose sales.

Capitalizing on one of our public warehousing facilities within 10 miles of manufacturing, Bonded expanded the partnership so that we could store and ship raw materials on the front end and pick up finished goods until they were ready for shipment on the trip back. In some cases, we are able to utilize our distribution capabilities to ship orders directly to their customers.

Keep Pace with Explosive Growth

An automotive parts manufacturer was experiencing explosive growth and their current 3PL was struggling to keep up. The client wanted visibility to their inventory, a state-of-the-art WMS (warehouse management system), FTZ capabilities, and a provider that was able to collaborate and help them sustain the growth.

Bonded worked with the customer to help build and now manages a state-of-the-art 135,000 sq. ft. warehouse close to manufacturing that is helping to sustain the client’s growth. Our WMS powered by Cadre Technologies helped meet the need of today’s clients to integrate operations and automate the order process for their just-in-time manufacturing. In addition, our customer web portal, BLI Web, allows them to get updates automatically to their ERP so they have complete visibility and transparency to order status and inventory levels.

Lean Manufacturing

A leading communications manufacturer was looking for a solution to get two of their JIT production facilities running as lean as possible to keep up with increasing demand. One way to do this was to optimize facility space by reducing the amount of raw materials storage from weeks down to 1-2 days.

Utilizing one of our public warehouses, Bonded condensed raw materials storage from the two facilities and now backfills these facilities with daily milk runs. Taking away this raw material storage space allowed the facilities to pick up over 100,000 sq. ft. for manufacturing efforts.

Do any of these scenarios sounds like something that may be affecting your ability to keep up with increased demand at your manufacturing facility? If so, reach out to us to see how our plant support services can help!

Jim Carr, Bonded’s Founder, Passes Away

CHARLOTTE, NC (June 5, 2017) – James A. Carr, Jr. passed away into the presence of our Lord June 1, 2017 after a brief illness. He was surrounded in death, as he was in life, by friends and his beloved family.

Mr. Carr is preceded in death by his parents, Mae Manson Carr and James A. Carr, his sister, Leila Freeman, and his son, Pastor Jim Carr. He is survived by his wife, the love of his life, Robin Carr of Charlotte, son Scott Carr and his wife, Susan, of Charlotte, Jim’s widow, Vickie Carr of Charlotte, daughters Kathryn Carr Warner and her husband, John, of Asheville, and Barbara Carr Woodall of Charlotte. He is also survived by nine grandchildren of whom he was ever proud: Jamie Warner, Erin Warner Guill, Aaron Carr, Camie Carr James, Beth Carr, Alex Carr Harris, Stephen Woodall, Sam Warner and Morgan Carr, as well as four great-grandchildren: Jaedon Carr, Ryleigh James, Madeline Warner and Zion Carr.

He was born on December 20, 1926, to the late Mae Manson Carr and James A. Carr in Maplewood, New Jersey, where he spent his childhood. There he grew up across the street from his eventual wife of almost 66 years, Robin Wood Carr. Mr. Carr served in the U.S. Army in Japan from 1945-1946. He attended Yale University and Virginia Tech before graduating from Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. He began his career in New York City, then worked in the corporate world for 20 years before co-founding Bonded Distribution in 1972, a warehousing and logistics business, in Charlotte with Robin Carr. Bonded Distribution, renamed Bonded Logistics in 2001, celebrated its 45th anniversary on February 1 of 2017. Mr. Carr, or “Mr. C” as he was called at work, remained passionate about the business and maintained an office and a presence at Bonded until his death. Its legacy continues under the leadership of two of his children, Scott Carr and Barbara Woodall.

Besides the two passions of his life, his family to whom he was devoted, and his business, Bonded Distribution, Mr. Carr was a Renaissance man with avid curiosity, a delicious sense of humor, and many interests that kept him young. His storytelling was full of great detail and entertained all. At 75, he began taking art classes at UNC-Charlotte and rekindled a lifelong interest in art that had taken a back seat to his career. He loved music, anything ‘Peanuts’ by Charles Schulz, enjoyed tennis for many years, and always had a stack of books by his side. Despite all that he did and all of his interests, he never made one feel that he was too busy. He would drop what he was doing and give any member of his family his full attention. While he – Jim, Dad, Gramps, Mr. C. – will be greatly missed, we are ever grateful for his long and full life, and for his presence in our lives.