Goodwill Industries of Michiana supports communities across Northern Indiana, Southwest Michigan and Southeast Chicagoland. Goodwill is currently in the process of transitioning their ecommerce platform from Shop Goodwill to Goodwill Finds. During this transition, the main objective is to increase textile capacity at the Goodwill warehouse from the current capacity of 4,000 to 30,000 items. The textile items range from basic items such as T-shirts to seasonal items such as winter coats and dresses.
The team was inspired to learn more about the many different services that Goodwill Industries provides the local South Bend community. These services go so much further beyond just employment opportunities. The revenue brought in by the stores and the ecommerce site are what make all of those different services possible. We know that drastically increasing the number of textiles sold through the ecommerce site directly contributes to helping more people thrive in our community.
The team also had an opportunity to visit the Goodwill warehouse in Kenwood Avenue, South Bend multiple times and ask questions pertaining to increasing the textical capacity at the warehouse. The warehouse is approximately 20,000 square feet in area. The warehouse currently uses Z-Racks, which have a capacity of 100 items per rack.
The limited space inside the warehouse is an additional challenge the team is focusing on. The team proposes to change the layout of books and textiles in order to optimize the capacity. With the new layout, Goodwill can fit up to 31,400 pieces of textiles which is 5% more than the requested capacity for inventory overflow. While we are decreasing the book storage area by 60%, we are suggesting the area above the racks to store books in the storage box mentioned above. We have also propose an inventory management and zoning system to ease the workload on the employees for the increase in textile pieces.