3. About Ausdoc. Leading offsite document storage and
Ausdoc Information Management, which management specialists Ausdoc
operates in all state capitals, along with a Information Management had a problem
number of regional centres, is owned by – in fact, a number of small problems
the private equity arm of ABN Amro Bank. adding up to one large one.
Ausdoc is a business archive service Ten years of rapid growth, both organically
provider. Businesses typically generate and by acquisition, meant it had ended up
enormous amounts of paper-based with nine storage facilities scattered
material, which they have to keep for a throughout the Sydney metropolitan area.
variety of reasons. As a result, its operations were becoming
“We specialise in tasks that support the increasingly inefficient. Documents owned
risk management, corporate governance, by a single customer could be stored in
administrative and compliance objectives several facilities, meaning that a retrieval
of our customers. request may have required consolidation
of documents from a number of locations
Because we are a specialist document
before being delivered to the customer.
management service provider, we can
typically secure, store, manage and Ausdoc was spending almost as much on
maintain documents more efficiently and transport services between its storage
cost effectively than a company trying to facilities as it was on transporting documents
do this internally,” said Ausdoc CEO to and from customers.
Michael Evett.
To resolve this situation and cope with the
Nationally, Ausdoc has about 10,000 company’s projected growth, there was
customers, from large “Top 100” companies, only one option: consolidate a number of
to very small single-person operations. the smaller, less-efficient sites into a major
Dexion Case Study – Ausdoc
4. facility which would accommodate the Every box handled by Ausdoc (and there you have nine record centres, there are “Dexion had a great deal of industry
long-term growth needs of Ausdoc. are literally millions) is in effect a unique various logistical challenges associated experience, and had done some work in
SKU. with consolidating these items and designing similar facilities. Both Dexion
In mid-2003, Ausdoc began moving into
its new Moorebank Records Centre, in satisfying customer expectations. and ourselves had looked at best-practice
The growth challenge.
Sydney’s southwest – a state-of-the-art operations overseas, and there was a lot
As briefly covered in the introduction, “This led us to our Moorebank facility,
warehouse with probably the highest of alignment in our thinking in terms of
Ausdoc’s need for a consolidated operation and the spare ‘paddock’ next to our new
storage density of any facility in Australia. how the facility should be configured, what
in Sydney resulted from its rapid growth Records Centre which will handle our
it should look like and so on.”
This facility features a four-level mezzanine over a number of years. growth for the next 12 years. Operating
storage system supplied by Dexion, and from a single site means we can be far Product supplied by Dexion included the
“We had acquired a number of businesses,
installed during an eight-part staged more efficient,” said Evett. following – and gives a good idea of the
and at the same time, the business had
implementation with extremely critical size of the installation:
grown very rapidly,” said Evett.
delivery dates. The facility.
“When we acquired a new business, • 7.5 km of Keylock uprights in a
6
While Evett, for commercial reasons, is not
Document tracking. we would integrate it at a process and pregalvanised finish
prepared to divulge the storage density
With a customer base the size of Ausdoc’s, operations level, rather than at a facilities
of the Moorebank Records Centre, or the • 54 km of Keylock beams
1
an effective operational IT system is level.
number of SKUs stored there, he believes • 05,000 nuts and bolts
1
essential, and Ausdoc has recently “This was compounded by our dynamic
the facility is achieving the best storage
completed the implementation of a single storage methodology which means that • 200 tonnes of Keylock rack
1
standard national IT platform, known as density of any warehouse in Australia –
an item which is retrieved from one Record
Loc@te. largely due to its unique design. • 5 tonnes of structural steel
4
Centre does not necessarily have to be
refiled in the same Record Centre when “One of our key partners in this exercise • 6,000 sqm of grid floor
1
Loc@te provides a warehouse management
returned by a customer. was Dexion and in particular Mark
tracking system that manages the receipt,
• 03,000 sqm of MDF board
1
location and movement of items “This meant that customers’ records may Barraclough (Dexion’s national business
throughout the organisation. be stored in a number of sites. And when development manager),” he said. • 5,000 Wingtek screws.
8
Dexion Case Study – Ausdoc
5. “Our building has been designed
to ensure we are still able to
satisfy the service expectations
of our customers, whilst meeting
our storage density objectives.”
“Having developed an understanding of Features include:
the required racking configuration, we • n energy-efficient lighting system, that
A
asked our property partner, Macquarie ensured there was sufficient light for
Record Centre staff to perform their
Goodman, to design a building to
tasks, but which turned off automatically
accommodate the racking structure,”
when an area was unoccupied.
Evett said.
• sophisticated fire engineering solution
A
“Our building has been designed to ensure that included in-rack sprinklers on each
we are still able to satisfy the service mezzanine level.
expectations of our customers, whilst • hermal engineering to prevent the
T
meeting our storage density objectives. building from heating up excessively; this
To achieve this, a lot of engineering and includes thermal sandwich panel walls
design work was required.” instead of the traditional tiltup concrete,
and a heat exchange system to purge
In its old Sydney warehouses, Ausdoc warm air from the day before and replace
used stock pickers, which required aisle it with cooler air when overnight
widths of 1200-1250 mm. temperatures are at their minimum.
At the new facility, it has opted to pick direct “At any one time, we had an ‘army’ of
from mezzanine floors – allowing significantly consultants working together developing
all the options,” said Evett.
narrower aisles and doubling of storage
density. “Mark Barraclough and the Dexion team
were involved at all levels, because just
The 15,000 sqm warehouse footprint has about every decision had to be looked at
four mezzanine levels, giving a total in the way it would affect the preferred
working area of 60,000 sqm. racking configuration and storage density.”
Dexion Case Study – Ausdoc
6. “The end result is a state-of-the-art
document management facility
that allows us to better manage
our customers’ needs more efficiently
and cost-effectively.”
The density challenge. “Because of this, we are confident that
Obviously there are practical commercial our Records Centre is at industry best
limits to density for any installation, and practice levels.
there is a need to balance storage density “A key element in the operation of the
with access and handling requirements. centre is its flexibility. The design of our
However, engineering and human resources system allows us to have as many people
issues also limit density, Evett said. as we want working on all four levels.
“When you get above a certain height, “That gives us a lot more flexibility, and
there is an array of additional matters that allows very high picking rates compared
come into play – you need to think about with other systems,” he said.
moving people up and down, and lifts “The end result is a state-of-the-art
come into the equation, you potentially document management facility that allows
have local council height restrictions, and us to better manage our customers’ needs
there are further engineering challenges in more efficiently and cost-effectively,”
the racking structure itself. said Evett.
Achieving best practise.
“In terms of the document management
industry in Australia, there are some
installations around with similar storage
density; however, we have not compromised
on any aspects of the design, engineering
and fit-out that relate to security, operational
efficiency, employee friendliness and
customer service,” said Evett.
Dexion Case Study – Ausdoc
