Designed Conveyor Systems (DCS) partners with wholesale, industrial, and electronics distributors to design efficient, optimized fulfillment solutions. Every operation DCS works to take a data driven approach to design and streamlines end-to-end functional processes—from inbound receiving and putaway to picking, packing, and shipping. We work closely with each client to understand their operational requirements—including inventory, product, and order profiles, volumes, throughput requirements and seasonality—to scale functional areas appropriately and determine where technology and automation best support the business case. Whether you distribute industrial components, janitorial chemicals, automotive spare parts, safety or MRO products, electrical components, or circuit boards, DCS will design your system to prioritize flexibility, scalability, business continuity, safety, throughput, and visibility from receiving to shipping.
Package Handling
DCS’s design and engineering team has more than 40 years of experience creating unique parcel handling systems for diverse customer applications. With installations including semi-automated handling in small city distribution centers and fully automated, integrated hubs with advanced conveyor and sorter equipment, DCS routinely thinks outside the box.
E-Commerce and Multi-Channel Fulfillment
DCS designs and implements end-to-end warehouse automation solutions for e-commerce and multi-channel retailers that address numerous workflow challenges. This includes solutions for receiving, putaway, storage, replenishment, order fulfillment, picking, packing, sortation, and outbound shipping. Our custom integrated warehouse, distribution, and fulfillment systems draw from a deep pool of conventional, semi-automated, and automated material handling technologies.
Various Distribution Applications
Whether an operation is considering the construction of a new distribution or fulfillment center, or a retrofit or expansion of an existing facility, it’s important to create a solution that fits the overarching supply chain strategy. DCS has four decades of experience designing and integrating comprehensive, end-to-end material handling solutions that meet a multitude of operational goals. Whether conventional, semi-automated, or fully automated, DCS can help your organization implement a custom solution that meets its goals while maximizing return on investment (ROI).
Supply Chain Consulting
The DCS Supply Chain Consulting team offers a range of services to help your operations address the challenges it faces. Working in partnership with you, DCS consultants analyze your business data- existing workforce, workflow processes, inventory, order data, operations, and more- to determine a strategy that addresses your unique needs. Whether you need an operations assessment, process improvement recommendations, or distribution design services, DCS consultants will help guide you to the material handling system or operational solution that best meets your current and future needs, as well as your budget.
Customer Support
Keeping your warehouse operations and material handling systems running smoothly and at the peak of productivity are the goals of DCS’ Customer Service Team. By partnering with DCS, your warehouse automation solution is supported from commissioning to end of life. You’ll receive comprehensive in-house training of your personnel, including specialized training of your designated internal system expert. Plus, DCS offers a complete package of spare parts and expert system troubleshooting support from qualified engineers dedicated to your installation.
System Design & Integration
DCS offers a broad range of material handling equipment and automated system design, installation, and integration services for a multitude of projects. These include retrofits, expansions, upgrades, and more. While every project is unique, our system design and execution processes are the same, encompassing meticulous attention to detail, frequent communication, and a dedicated partnership with our clients.
Life Science & Healthcare
Pharmaceutical, healthcare, and life science companies face mounting pressure from evolving regulatory requirements, rising fulfillment costs, and intensifying accuracy demands. In this environment, automation isn’t optional—it’s essential. Designed Conveyor Systems (DCS) helps distributors of these critical products stay compliant and competitive.
Pet Food
Pet food distribution operations are anything but standard. From bulky kibble bags to delicate fish tanks, stock keeping unit (SKU) complexity and fulfillment pressure are always on the rise. Designed Conveyor Systems (DCS) partners with leading pet retailers to design and engineer automation, software, and material handling systems that keep operations agile, accurate, and ready for what’s next.
Home Improvement
When your distribution center handles everything from hammers to hot tubs, operational complexity isn’t a challenge—it’s your daily reality. Home improvement retailers face intense pressure to meet rising consumer expectations across multiple channels—from in-store pickups to last-mile delivery. At Designed Conveyor Systems (DCS), we specialize in engineering material handling and automation solutions that help home improvement distribution centers keep pace, reduce cost, and drive accuracy at scale.
Sporting Goods
Navigating the unique demands of the sporting goods retail industry requires a distribution strategy that’s both agile and precise. From handling seasonal surges to managing a diverse range of products—from bulky equipment to small accessories—your warehouse operations are the key to a seamless customer experience. Our expertise helps sporting goods retailers streamline their distribution warehouses, improving order accuracy, boosting productivity, and ensuring your team can efficiently move products from the receiving dock to the final customer, no matter the season.
Footwear
In the fast-paced world of footwear retail requires a distribution strategy that can handle a vast array of styles, sizes, and seasonal trends with precision and speed. From managing a high volume of SKUs to ensuring accurate order fulfillment and returns processing, your distribution center is the engine that drives customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. Our expertise helps footwear retailers streamline their distribution centers, improving inventory management, accelerating order processing, and ensuring your team can efficiently move products from the receiving dock to the final customer, no matter the season.
Wholesale & Industrial Distribution
Designed Conveyor Systems (DCS) partners with wholesale, industrial, and electronics distributors to design efficient, optimized fulfillment solutions. Every operation DCS designs streamlines end-to-end functional processes—from inbound receiving and putaway to picking, packing, and shipping. Designed Conveyor Systems (DCS) partners with wholesale, industrial, and electronics distributors to design efficient, optimized fulfillment solutions. Every operation DCS designs streamlines end-to-end functional processes—from inbound receiving and putaway to picking, packing, and shipping.
About Us
Designed Conveyor Systems (DCS) has 40 years of experience serving major clients in multiple industries by providing material handling, full-scale warehouse operations, and conveyor design solutions that are custom crafted for their needs. DCS does not sell ready-made conveyor systems but builds relationships that empower collaboration to craft custom warehouse designs together. DCS utilizes consulting, engineering design, project management, installation services, and client support to ensure our customers can keep their promises to deliver on time.
Projects
With more than 40 years of experience providing automated system design, installation, and integration services, DCS has created solutions for companies throughout the United States in a broad range of industries and markets. We’ve completed more than 1500 projects ranging from greenfield facilities with completely new systems to expansions and retrofits of existing operations.
Upcoming Events
Designed Conveyor Systems values building strong relationships with our clients. Join us at our upcoming events to collaborate and discover how we can design a custom warehouse solution tailored to your unique needs.
Wholesale & Industrial Distribution
Wholesale & Industrial Distribution
Wholesale & Industrial Solutions
DCS delivers automated material handling systems and software to wholesale and industrial distributors across a range of industries, including:
Industrial products and components
Hardware, plumbing, HVAC parts and supplies
Janitorial and sanitation products
Spare parts and supplies for maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO)
Safety products
Commercial and consumer electronics, electronic components and devices
Original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and aftermarket automotive parts
Spare parts for powered industrial equipment, aviation, and commercial vehicles
Food and beverage
Challenges Faced in Wholesale & Industrial Distribution
Disrupted Supply Chains and Shifting Global Trade
Geopolitical factors—from tariffs and trade agreements to port congestion and shipping delays—continue to challenge the wholesale industrial supply chain. Nearshoring and reshoring create new requirements for network design and adaptability. DCS reviews, analyzes, and models operational data, business requirements, and global supply chain inputs. These details inform the development of strategic supply chain roadmap to help wholesale and industrial distributors be prepared to adapt and respond amid any geopolitical scenario.
Labor Costs and Retention Struggles
With rising labor costs and increasing scarcity of skilled warehouse workers, industrial distribution facilities still relying on manual, high-touch workflows struggle to meet service level agreements (SLAs). Meanwhile, physical strain and inefficiencies add to risk and turnover. DCS can engineer a solution that enhances throughput, utilization, and ergonomics. The result? A system that boosts your workforce’s productivity, improves training and efficiency, and leverages automation and technology to ultimately reduce the chances of injuries.
Inventory Complexity and Mixed Storage Needs
Wholesale and industrial product lines—including chemicals, fragile parts, and electrostatic-sensitive electronic components—often have special handling requirements. Further, depending on each product’s characteristics (cases, pallets, or oddly shaped items), a blend of racking, shelving, bin systems, and bulk storage is often required. Without data driven storage logic and dynamic slotting, replenishment and picking quickly become inefficient and error prone. Let DCS design and implement a solution that effectively manages specialized inventory profiles and streamlines handling workflows.
Legacy Systems and Fragmented Tech Stacks
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, warehouse management system (WMS) software, and automation technologies are often out of sync—slowing fulfillment and limiting data flow. Many wholesalers rely on outdated software and original equipment manufacturer (OEM) platforms that may create bottlenecks and complicate automation upgrades. By deploying DCS’ proprietary warehouse execution system (WES), DATUM, your wholesale industrial distribution facility can extend the functionality of current hardware, software, and controls within the operations. This also provides a framework that supports future operational enhancements.
Value-Added Services and Customer Expectations
Within the wholesale, industrial, and electronic component space, many customers require more specialized handling than traditional pick-and-pack operations. Light assembly, kitting, labeling, and returns handling are very common—but can be difficult to scale without automation and accurate inventory visibility. Informed by an operational assessment, DCS can implement a system that enhances efficiency throughout each handling process to help you meet your customers’ exacting specifications.
Consolidation Activity and Network Complexity
Mergers and acquisitions leave operators managing inherited networks, redundant distribution centers (DCs), and incompatible processes. Flexibility and modular design are critical in adapting infrastructure without complete overhauls. Through assessments of both assets and network, DCS can help modernize your facilities and location strategies to enhance customer service through faster delivery and lower transportation costs.
DCS Crafts Purpose-Built Solutions for Wholesale & Industrial Distribution
DATUM: Open Architecture WES
DATUM—DCS’ proprietary WES—integrates with any legacy, commercial, or homegrown WMS. It bridges data gaps from receiving to shipping, enabling inventory accuracy, labor visibility, and process control. By enabling current material handling hardware and software to be modernized but not replaced, DATUM lets your facility avoid expensive updates while enhancing operational resilience and agility.
Network Strategy
DCS evaluates your distribution footprint through a data-driven analysis of SLAs, transportation costs, and facility utilization. Whether consolidating, expanding, or regionalizing, DCS ensures your network aligns with customer demand and margin goals.
Data-Driven, Custom System Design
DCS engineers solutions tailored to your wholesale and industrial operational requirements. By leveraging operational data about your inventory, product and order profiles, storage and process needs—along with details about overall throughput and projected growth targets—DCS designs right-sized storage, efficient workflows, and long-term flexibility. Your system will utilize automation where it makes the most operational sense. With a brand-agnostic approach, your custom design will incorporate the optimal mix of technologies—such as AMRs, goods-to-person AS/RS, sortation, light-directed picking, and more—balanced with throughput demands, labor constraints, and return on investment (ROI).
Real Results, Real Clients
DCS is a proven partner to wholesale distributors and industrial distributors and manufacturers of components, electronics, hardware, and spare parts, helping them address:
- Large SKU bases, varied product profiles, and diverse inventory mix
- Inefficient space utilization and slotting optimization
- High labor costs and throughput limitations
- Rapid growth and limited expansion capacity
- Cumbersome material and process flow
- End of life material handling technologies
- Functionally limited warehouse management software and controls
- Outdated operations and network strategies
Graco Automates Fulfillment with Transition to High-Tech DC
Problem: Graco’s aging distribution center (DC) lacked space and relied on outdated equipment, causing fulfillment bottlenecks, downtime, and inefficiencies.
Solution: DCS designed and implemented a brand-agnostic, fully automated fulfillment system featuring a goods-to-person automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS), autonomous mobile robot (AMR)-based order consolidation, and integrated warehouse control software (WCS).
Results: Graco’s modernized distribution capabilities eliminated previous workflow pain points through seamless automation integration.
Superior Communications Boosts Throughput with New WES
Problem: Superior Communications’ explosive order volume and growing inventory count outpaced its legacy systems, limiting visibility, flexibility, and fulfillment efficiency.
Solution: DCS implemented its DATUM warehouse execution system (WES) to enhance replenishment, order flow visibility, labor planning, tote tracking, and packing efficiency without replacing the existing warehouse management system (WMS).
Results: In just five weeks, DATUM improved picking rates by 40%, increased pack-out efficiency by 20%, and enabled faster onboarding, greater order accuracy, and scalable automation readiness.
Meyn Americas Boosts Spare Parts Fulfillment with AMRs and WES
Problem: Meyn Americas needed to modernize its manual, paper-based picking process to improve fulfillment speed, reduce errors, and support growth from a new spare parts distribution center (DC).
Solution: DCS designed and implemented a scalable solution featuring autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) and its DATUM WES to optimize workflows, integrate with Meyn’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, and enhance visibility.
Results: DATUM and the automated solutions increased throughput, reduced picking errors, and cut both costs and emissions associated with Meyn’s global shipping process.
Wholesale & Industrial FAQs
The cost of implementing automation at your wholesale or industrial distribution facility can vary widely based on what technologies you choose. DCS has observed that ROI typically comes within 2-4 years, and sometimes as quickly as 12 months.
There are many automation solutions available to wholesale or industrial distribution companies. DCS’s wholesale and industrial clients see great success with motorized transport conveyor systems, light-directed put walls, and automatic sortation systems, including cross belt, tilt-tray, and bomb bay loop sorters. We also offer custom systems tailored to handle bulk storage, chemicals, fragile parts, and electrostatic-sensitive electronic components.
DATUM, DCS’s proprietary warehouse execution system (WES), integrates seamlessly with your company’s legacy software, hardware, and automation systems, including commercial and custom WMS software. DATUM incorporates a flexible, secure API gateway and integration bridge, as well as multi-agent orchestration features to create a unified mix of people and automation. This transforms different systems and workflows into a coordinated, intelligent operation capable of delivering predictive throughput.
DCS can create a scalable, adaptable, and modernized automation plan for your wholesale or industrial distribution operation. On the digital side, DCS can deploy a platform to manage diverse and evolving inventory profiles. On the physical side, we can design flexible conveyance solutions, storage methods, and handling processes that accommodate a broad range of product sizes, packaging types, and throughput volumes. Cloud-based software, flexible automated solutions such as autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), and dense storage solutions that maximize the cube of your warehouse are available to help you increase capacity without expanding your facility’s current footprint.
Wholesale and industrial distribution operators can achieve basic automation equipment proficiency within one week. The knowledge base for managers is more expansive, so training typically takes several weeks. DCS offers both levels of system training with new installations, as well as refresher and advanced training through our ASURE MRO (maintenance, repair, and operations) program.
Connect with DCS
DCS combines consulting, design, engineering, and software integration to build a custom solution for wholesale and industrial distributors. Let us help you achieve your accuracy, reliability, and compliance goals with a scalable, secure, and integrated system. Schedule a consultation.
Service Offerings
Supply Chain Consulting Services
The DCS Supply Chain Consulting team offers a range of services to help your operations address the challenges it faces. Following its acquisition of Waller Consulting, the Waller Consulting team combines decades of consulting expertise with DCS’s industry-leading systems integration and automation capabilities.
End-to-End Customer Service and Support
Keeping your warehouse operations and material handling systems running smoothly and at the peak of productivity are the goals of DCS’ Customer Service Team. By partnering with DCS, your warehouse automation solution is supported from commissioning to end of life. You’ll receive comprehensive in-house training of your personnel, including specialized training of your designated internal system expert. Plus, DCS offers a complete package of spare parts and expert system troubleshooting support from qualified engineers dedicated to your installation.
Custom Automated System Design and Integration
DCS offers a broad range of services including automated system design, installation, and integration services for a multitude of projects. These include retrofits, expansions, upgrades, and more. While every project is unique, our system design and execution processes are the same, encompassing meticulous attention to detail, frequent communication, and a dedicated partnership with our clients.