Individual Reflection by Sui

Firstly, I would like to express my many thanks to all the LOM lecturers that were involved in the logistics and planning of the whole field trip to the Army Logistics Base on the 28 November 2008. For sure it took some effort to arrange the whole second year LOM students to visit such a facility which require secrecy.

As such, I thoroughly enjoyed myself that day. I was very glad they had the head of operations from Singapore Technologies Logistics (STL) to personally explain the different areas and services they provided for the Army Logistics Base and MINDEF.

During the presentation, I took notice of the slides and realised the different services provided by STL were categorized under MOS and PODS. Essentially, it just tells us how much of the service is determined to belong to either STL or MINDEF. For example, under Other Distribution Channels, there is the Self Collection Over Counter Issue. This channel is used for controlled equipments such as fire arms and is under the charge of MINDEF. Another example is the mission support – Charlie 130.

After the delicious light snacks they provided for us, we toured the warehouse. I was really impressed with the sophistication of the warehouse. Seriously I thought warehouses were still pretty much “old school” and automation within a warehouse was very limited. But oh how wrong I was! (Although we’ve studied and covered automation in warehouses and logistics operations, I only believed it when I saw it with my own eyes!) So firstly we were introduced to the Automated Storage and Retrieval System (ASRS) which was the pallet ASRS and bin ASRS. The heights of their storage racks are 30m and 9m respectively. Its pretty cool that so many bins can be retrieved within an hour with only 2 pickers. I was also highly impressed with the Profile Checker before a pallet enters the storage area – it detects an odd shaped item and stops the pallet before it enters storage (a red light actually came on!)

Next up was the Mobile Racking System. It was the first time I saw such a massive structure that moves with the touch of a button! What was emphasized was the safety of this system. There is an Auto Stop sensor which stops the entire movement of the racks whenever something hits the sensor – This was the part I pushed Karen Leong into the system’s track to test out the safety system myself!

After which we headed up to the medical storage area. The lift which brought us up to the temperature controlled warehouse was huge! (I even tried jumping up and down to stall the lift but it just too massive.) I found out later that the purpose of such a huge lift was because even the Laser Guided Vehicle (LGV) uses the lift and strategic lasers and sensors are placed to guide the LGV into the lift safely.

At this storage area, they made use of another automated system such as the Vertical Carousel System (VCS) – it’s a tall grey structure with a small gap at the bottom. The pickers there showed us a live demonstration of how to enter the item number from the order slip and then the VCS automatically rotates and comes to a halt when it reaches the item and a light comes on to tell the picker exactly which bin to take the item from. After which the picker is required to scan the items to tally the amount of inventory that is stored in the system and any point of time. The safety aspect of this system was also tested out with one of our course mate put his hand into the VCS gap while the system was rotating. It stopped immediately when the sensor was activated.

The ALB adopts a ‘through flow’ layout and the LGV as mentioned earlier could be found at the storage center entrance.

Overall, I was most amazed and impressed with the safety precautions practiced with these highly advanced and massive automated storage systems used at the ALB.

Hope to have more field trips soon! :D