What They Needed
Experiencing year-after-year of revenue growth, Carroll Service Company of Lanark, IL needed to expand their operations. Recent labor shortages and supply chain disruptions were major pain points, particularly as they grew.
Analyzing their internal procedures and talking with members, building a new fertilizer and chemical facility became a top priority.
“Speed, accuracy, and supply were most important to our members,” shared Chase Sellnow, Carroll Service Company GM. “Automation, increased storage, and scalability became the clear solution.”
First, Carroll Service needed to figure out how to continue to deliver fast and accurate service with newer, less experienced staff.
“Not only does automation help us accomplish more with our existing staff, ICS and ControlPro’s intuitive interfaces help less experienced employees maintain accuracy, for both our customer blends and our own internal inventory levels,” Sellnow explained.
Second, Carroll Services wanted to ensure that they had the necessary product on-hand to meet demand, rather than relying on wholesalers and distributors being timely. This meant increasing storage capacity.
What We Designed
Carroll Service opted to shut down smaller manual facilities and build a larger, centralized location fully automated with increased storage capacity, and a 24/7 access bay. Having done projects with Murray Equipment previously and their familiarity with ICS Controls, the decision was easy for Carroll Service.
They built an 85’ x 115’ multi-use facility with warehouse space, heated storage, and 2 secure bays with restricted access to the products. One of the bays also provides 24/7 loadout services and year-round offloading capabilities.
The facility is fully-automated with Murray Equipment’s ICS Controls.
“What stood out to us is that ICS ControlPro software is an intuitive easy to use software for the guy in the chem shed,” said Sellnow. “For us, that meant less training and more accuracy, without sacrificing speed.”
Benefits Achieved
Increasing the speed of their operations has also helped Carroll Service with some of its labor issues.
“What took us up to 20 minutes to load is now down to 5 minutes,” Sellnow shared. “Increasing speed creates hours. Instead of waiting for trucks to load, time can be reallocated to other areas such as applying product to the field.”
Other benefits include billing, inventory, and blend accuracy.
“We’ve had great experience with ControlPro’s integration with AgVance. It has improved the efficiency and accuracy of both producing workorders and billing,” said Sellnow.
One unexpected benefit was increased business from large area growers that had previously managed their own blends.
“Growers are also facing the same labor and supply challenges as we are,” articulated Sellnow. “Thanks to our increased speed and on-hand inventory, large growers are finding it more advantageous to have Carroll Service create their blends while allowing their experienced employees to stay out in the field.”
FACILITY PHOTO GALLERY
