“Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers who can cut through the argument debate and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand.” – Colin Powell, former U.S. Secretary of State

The warehouse is a cornerstone of an efficient supply chain. Good warehousing means efficiency, reliability, and reduced risk. That, in turn, means faster acquisition, storage, staging, and distribution at a lower cost without compromising quality.

And that’s why DIS-TRAN has long invested in its own warehousing facility; pushing efficiency has always been a driving force for us.

In fact, our warehouse facility – with both indoor and outdoor portions – has given us an enormous degree of agility and flexibility with projects. For example, if work on a project has been delayed or paused, we can store project materials or equipment as needed, which can relieve what could otherwise turn into a huge logistical headache for everyone. It also helps that we staff our warehouse sufficiently (with OSHA 10 certified personnel) to keep it moving, a surprising source of friction and slowdown from organizations that don’t specialize in warehousing.

Even better, our warehousing facility also plays an unsung role in our ability to deliver innovative products.

“Our capacity to preassemble substations and ship individual components as prefabricated sub-assemblies is a huge benefit to customers,” says Brad Fontenot, Vice President of Project Support Services at DIS-TRAN. “And right now, we’re the only ones doing major pre-assembly.”

Specifically, our warehouse is a high-efficiency project assembly facility where all project pieces can come together for fabrication, quality checks, assembly, and perfectly-timed distribution. It’s a key part of how we can deliver our pre-fabricated bus and factory-built substations products.

For example, one skid-built substation that would have taken weeks to install if we’d followed the traditional path, instead took just 4 days. In that project, we gathered all the materials in our warehouse and assembled the equipment there, before mounting everything onto skids for the subsequent 1,700-mile cross-country journey. Once on site, all the customer had to do was grab the structures with cranes, set in place, and bolt down – because virtually all the assembly happened in our warehouse first.

Our warehouse also plays a key role in how organized our shipments are. If you’ve ever appreciated the organization and labeling of materials and equipment as they arrive on-site, that’s because our warehouse gives us the perfect space to marshal everything before transporting it.

“Marshalling is more than just parking everything here,” Brad explains. “We quality-check the material to make sure it’s the right fit and part number, labeled appropriately, and in good working order. Our warehouse enables us to maintain and enforce very high-quality standards.”