The new Caterpillar Logistics Service Inc. distribution plant on the West Plains, which was built last year and began stocking last fall, has ramped shipping up to 10,000 heavy-equipment parts per day.

Brad Gile, the logistics center's manager, says 2013 is considered the first full-volume year for operations at the 562,000-square-foot distribution facility that ships parts to independently-owned Caterpillar dealerships. The center currently stocks more than 120,000 parts, which is up from 100,000 parts in December, he says.

He says Caterpillar Logistics measures the quality of performance at the plant based on whether the right parts get to dealers on a timed schedule. On-time shipments are considered to be those on a delivery truck within 12 hours after the plant receives the order. When an emergency part is ordered, the standard is shipment within 90 minutes after an order is received.

"Last month, we had a 100 percent on-time shipment rate," he says, estimating that the plant started at about a 98 percent rate. "Our quality numbers are at global best-in-class. The international standard for quality allows five errors per 10,000 lines shipped. Ours is better than that."

He says at the plant's current shipping volume is 7,000 to 10,000 lines a day. In the distribution industry, a line refers to products in a related group. For example, if the facility ships six filters and two bolts to a dealer, that would be considered two lines.

The facility employs 140 people, which Gile says is expected to remain a steady number for the foreseeable future.

"We carry a lot of unique parts, everything from nuts and bolts and decals to an engine or a boom, everything our dealers would need to serve their customers," he says.

In addition to the storage of parts held inside the facility, the distribution plant uses about 250,000 square feet of outside storage space, he says.

"We primarily serve five dealerships," he says. ""We serve Alaska, all of the Northwest, western Canada, and a small piece of eastern Russia."

Those dealerships include Western States Equipment Co., serving Idaho, Eastern Washington, Oregon, western Montana, and parts of Wyoming; NC Machinery, serving Alaska and Western and Central Washington; and Peterson Machinery Co., covering Oregon and southeast Washington. The others are Finning International Inc., of Alberta; and Tractor & Equipment Co., serving Montana, northwestern North Dakota, and portions of Wyoming.

The Caterpillar Logistics site here is located on part of a 72-acre parcel of land along Hallet Road east of the Interstate 90-Medical Lake interchange, near the corner of Hallet and Thomas Mallen roads. The plant is one of four such facilities brought online in recent years that were part of a multiyear realignment of the company's parts distribution network in North America.

The company opened a similar plant in Waco, Texas, in May 2009, and a 1 million-square-foot center near Dayton, Ohio, in May 2011.

The Spokane-area plant opened on the same day as Caterpillar Logistics' fourth new distribution plant, located in Arvin, Calif., Gile says.

"It's part of the strategy to have distribution centers closer to customers, and to stock parts and emergency parts in the same facility. Before, we had smaller emergency parts centers," including an emergency parts center in Spokane Valley that closed when the new West Plains plant opened.

That former Spokane Valley 125,000-square-foot Caterpillar regional parts distribution outlet, at 6811 E. Mission, is listed for sale through NAI Black, Gile says.

Meanwhile, he says the new facility has room to expand operations within the current building, because of some floor space gaps designed intentionally with growth in mind as the plant's volume grows.

"We have a multiyear plan for expanding as our customers grow; it's just dependent on the market," he says. "There's no definite year, but we have designed the building to be expanded."

Peoria, Ill.-based Caterpillar Inc., which owns the Morton, Ill.-based subsidiary Caterpillar Logistics, has reported first-quarter 2013 sales and revenues of $13.2 billion, down from $15.9 billion in the first quarter of 2012. The company says it has three large market segments that include the construction industries, power systems, and resource industries that involve mostly mining.

Gile says the Caterpillar dealerships are themselves large companies that place all their orders electronically for parts on Caterpillar's proprietary system, which "takes the order and sources them to the correct distribution center."

He adds, "If it's an emergency part and we don't have the part, the system keeps searching until it finds the part, even if it's in Singapore, and we'll ship it within 90 minutes." However, most of the parts that are ordered through the system as stocked inventory items are readily available, he adds.

At the plant here, a majority of the employees are warehouse associates. Some employees work with the inbound inventory, breaking down big boxes of parts or stocking them on shelves. Other workers are called warehouse coaches, as associates who lead 10 warehouse associates, Gile says.

It takes about two months to learn to be a warehouse associate, Gile says, and it requires a lot of safety training, "People can be usually on the floor after a week with a trainer," he adds.

"There's a little bit of automation, but for this industry, there's not a lot," he adds. "Logistics is a people business for sure. It's pretty hands on."

He says other plant workers include a few managers, human resources employees, office support workers, and one industrial engineer.

"We don't do any assembly here; It's all distribution," he says. The plant uses a proprietary inventory management system for the entire distribution network.

The facility has loading docks along the east side of the building for receiving incoming parts, while outbound docks for shipping are positioned along the west side of the building. Workers throughout the plant can use handheld computer devices, called RF guns, which provide parts information and print shipping labels.

Near the entrance of the distribution plant, a two-level, 150,000-bin-capacity storage area holds smaller parts. "We can go up another level," when growth is needed, Gile says.

Employees who pick out inventory from the bin system can access a computer system with voice capability, called Lydia, he says, adding, "She talks to you and tells you what to pick."

In a central part of the facility, the parts stored in the warehouse increase in size and weight, and those items are kept on larger, tiered shelving. A number of workers handle forklifts to pull inventory or place it on shelves.

The employees aren't permitted to lift manually any boxes or parts that weigh more than 50 pounds, "so we use machines," Gile says.

In other areas that have heavier parts, the employees use vacuum lift machines, a pulley system, or a crane. Parts such as engines for mining trucks or a boom for an excavator are stored at the farthest north end of the facility.

"We have a 25-ton crane here for engines for mining trucks," Gile adds. "A flatbed truck parks here and we load it on."

An outside warehouse yard stores items that include cutting edges and bucket tips, he says.