Stuff article | Aimee Shaw  05:00, Aug 06 2023

OfficeMax are Restaurant Association strategic partners, offering RA members exclusive member stationery, technology, furniture, cleaning and hygiene product benefits (and more). Find out more here.

OfficeMax has invested millions of dollars in new-to-market technologies that make the picking and packing of its customers’ orders even more efficient.

The company, which once had a network of 14 retail stores across the country, was one of the first retailers to import a multimillion-dollar custom box making and packing machine.

Now, the office, school and workplace supplies retailer is focused on the trial and roll-out of a glove with a fingertip scanning device for its distribution centre staff to wear for faster scanning and picking of product in its Auckland and Christchurch warehouses. OfficeMax has invested about $50,000 so far in trialling the new glove scanning technology.

Traditionally its workers scan each box as it comes into their zone – an action done about 200,000 times per week.

This new technology enables staff to quickly press a finger mounted scanner to read the barcode, identify and transmit the details of the product to be picked to the picker’s headset.

OfficeMax managing director Kevin Obern said the organisation was looking to initially deploy 10 gloves in its high-frequency pick zones and then roll out an additional 30 to cover its conveyor area pick team members. Voice picking technology has been used in its Auckland centre since 2008.  Roughly 64% of its total order volume is completed by voice pick.

“Technology is constantly changing and we’ve rolled out a lot over the last two years.  It’s also provided us with additional data and insights,” said Obern.

“We’ve invested a lot of money in the last three years. It was over the Covid years, and even though there was a huge amount of downside, it at times forced us to improve our internal technology. One, to enable people to work from home, and secondly to make those people more efficient.”

Obern said OfficeMax aims to be ahead of the curve when streamlining its operations by adopting new technology.

The company has spent over $5 million on new technology and future-proofing its business, including extending its 22,000m² Highbrook distribution centre in Auckland by 7500m².

In 2020, it introduced boxing and packing machines, which produce 24 boxes per minute which can be custom-sized in the packing process and reducing its landfill waste by 1700kg each year.

The boxing machines resize each box and hot glue a lid at the required height based on the amount of product is in the box, reducing the need for additional bubble wrap or paper to fill the void.

Obern said the machines have saved the company about $200,000 each year on box filler alone.

Despite facing recessionary pressures, Obern said OfficeMax had been able to sustain growth. By the end of the 2023, OfficeMax forecasts its sales would have grown by another 3%. It has about 33,000 regular account customers across the education, business and government sectors, and is further ramping up its “direct from supplier shipping” efforts. The business holds stock of around 35,000 products, and lists thousands of other products on its website that it does not stock and instead ships directly from its suppliers as orders are received. Closing the 14 retail shops in 2020 was the best decision OfficeMax could have made, said Obern.

He said the closure of stores did not affect revenue and allowed the company to focus on digital and automation.

“We’re starting to use AI in some parts of the business already, we’ve got some work going on in our call centre, which will help us in that space, and we’re just doing a refresh of a lot of our data so that we can optimise that to get better customer insights,” said Obern.

The company was also doing more sustainability work within its North Island and South Island distribution centres to improve connectivity with its distributors and better track its carbon footprint.

It has installed 798 solar panels in its distribution centres, generating about 29% of the power used at those sites, retired all gas and petrol forklifts and is in the process of replacing its fleet of vehicles with EVs and hybrids.

OfficeMax started out as a national stationer and publishing company known as Whitcombe and Tombs in 1871. It has since grown to a team of more than 500 and is owned by private investment firm Platinum Equity.

OfficeMax are Restaurant Association strategic partners, offering RA members exclusive member stationery, technology, furniture, cleaning and hygiene product benefits (and more). Find out more here.

RA members can sign up with OfficeMax today: simply email ranz@officemax.co.nz and they will help get you started, or contact the Association on 0800 737 827.

Reproduced from original Stuff article which can be found here.