Relationship Focus: Parts Town
Parts Town is a food service equipment parts distributor based in Addison, IL. Since 1987, Parts Town has provided genuine OEM parts to local, national, and international restaurants with same-day shipping, delivery, or pickup.
Timing is everything in the restaurant industry. Parts Town prioritizes getting its customers back up and running quickly to avoid extended downtime—and the company prides itself on having the world’s largest in-stock inventory for OEM parts.
“We are expected to ship everything. If we have the product in stock, we’re expected to ship it same day,” said Troy Appel, Parts Town Vice President of Operations and Logistics.
Hytrol Conveyor Co. is a world leader in the design and manufacturing of material handling systems for a variety of industries. Bastian Solutions is a leading integrator of automated material handling solutions, warehouse controls software, and data analytics. Bastian Solutions is also a top Hytrol integrator, and the companies have been partners since the 1960s.
Hytrol and Bastian Solutions began working with Parts Town as early as 2014.
“The continuous collaboration between Parts Town and Bastian really saw how much they trust us and how much we’ve seen our relationship grow through the years,” Spiros Tzanetakos, Bastian Solutions Senior Regional Manager, said. “We have been a trusted integration partner for them as we have dealt with the many challenges that they have seen.”
Those challenges included order fulfillment speed, limited inventory space, and picking and packing inefficiencies—all while keeping up with heavy order volumes and even moving facilities.
“We were processing around 5,000 lines a day, and we were making a same-day shipping guarantee to our customers,” according to Appel. “And it was very hard to achieve that same-day shipping on a regular basis. So, we needed a conveyor solution that would grow with us.”
Appel continues, “Bastian made us aware of Hytrol as a potential solution for the conveyor that we use to support the business here. And we liked the technology from the shoe sorters and the different types of drives and MDR equipment that came with the Hytrol solution. It worked really well for our operation, both with the volume that we were dealing with at the time, and we planned well ahead for the kind of volume we knew we’d be doing in just a few years because we were growing very rapidly as a company.”
Hytrol and Bastian Solutions worked on two major material handling projects for Parts Town. For Bastian, the AutoStore implementation was key to providing much needed storage for the company’s growing inventory needs. Nearly two miles of Hytrol conveyor is featured across the facility—on ground level and at elevated positions—providing accumulation, sortation, and transportation throughout.
“The key component to their facility automation is Hytrol conveyor. It is the main driver for all transportation within their outbound processes, and all processes within the facility are guided through the Hytrol conveyor. Additionally, Parts Town uses the AutoStore, which is a high-dense solution for storage and picking which has essentially become the heart of their automation system,” said Nathan Armando, Bastian Solutions Field Application Engineer/Parts Town Account Manager.
Utilizing AutoStore, Parts Town’s pick rate increased by 4 to 5 times what it was if products were moved on foot. With the solution, several items can be picked by just one operator. The AutoStore is stocked by employees and robots. As overhead robots deliver bins to be restocked, employees utilize an interactive database to know what items need to be replenished. Once items are picked, the boxes are placed on a Hytrol conveyor and are transported to either the assembly area for other items to be added or directly to the to the packing area. Facilitating transportation to this area has been a big win for Parts Town.
“I think one of the key benefits we get with the Hytrol system is the ability to sort different types of work into the pack area. We can determine that small boxes that need less dunnage and less sort of hand-touching manipulation can go to specific lanes while the larger boxes that might need to be cut down or use a different type of dunnage go to other types of lanes,” Appel states.
“So, the Hytrol system we have over under lanes for the large boxes, just standard case seal lanes for the small boxes and the sorters that allow us to very nimbly move any size box into any type of lane that we want so we can better match the labor requirements of the packaging to the type of order that we’re preparing.”
Hytrol’s ProSort sliding shoe sorters are essential for the packing and shipping areas. In one packing area, a ProSort system is over 80 feet in length, running at a speed of 260 feet per minute. After shipping labels are applied, another ProSort running at 305 feet per minute gently sorts packages to the designated shipping lanes. Both sorters are essential to the processes in these areas.
“The two vital, I’ll say, organs of their system,” Armando explains. “Pumping out high volumes through the conveyor system and that is heavily driven by the shoe sorter. Shoe sorter does a great job of increasing the speed and the access for diverting through their main processes and maintaining a robust solution for the Parts Town system.”
Following updates to their current facility, Parts Town accommodates nearly 200,000 parts and routinely goes above 25,000 product lines. On a record day, it can reach over 30,000 lines. The distribution center also maintains a line ship rate of over 99.8 percent.
Appel adds, “The solution in general with Hytrol has helped us more than quadruple the volume from what it was when we originally installed the system in 2018. And we’ve been able to expand and add, like, an additional spiral and redundant paths to packing and order assembly and other places where we need to go pretty easily using the systems and working with Bastian, our integrator.”
Utilizing the combined efforts of Hytrol and Bastian Solutions, Parts Town was able to accomplish its goal of increasing automation to fit their increasing volume. The speed and efficiency allow the company to provide restaurateurs the parts they need on time.
“What Bastian has done from an integration side and what Hytrol has done with their quality conveyor products has really met the integration cohesiveness between the two,” said Tzanetakos. “Being a long-time partner of Hytrol, we truly have seen how they’ve supported us and more so how it’s translated to the end user like Parts Town.”
Service after installation is a key component to continuously solve any potential issues that may arise. Both Hytrol and Bastian Solutions work to make sure any needs are met and resolved as expansion takes place.
“We’ve worked well with Bastian to both help train us and train our operators how to use the equipment, how to troubleshoot problems,” recounts Appel. “And we have gone, taken an additional step to work to bring Hytrol on site and help train newer maintenance people with how to use the sorters, especially, and probably the more complicated pieces of equipment that we have. So, in general, we resolve problems by leaning on our integration partner who pulls together the right resources to solve pretty much any problem we face.”
Customer success is the main goal for Hytrol and Bastian Solutions, enabling Parts Town to prepare for business growth well into the future.
“This is our main building in the Midwest,” according to Appel. “We ship most of our volume today out of this facility. We are augmenting our capabilities with a second facility in the West, but the site that we have here that’s mostly Hytrol conveyor is going to remain a very important part of our network. I think being able to maintain and grow the volume as we continue to grow the business will be important for this facility.”
