[Brown Duckz]

Glovis Alabama may double work force
By Charles Barnette • April 22, 2008

MONTGOMERY - A new 250,000-square-foot warehouse will double the size of the current Glovis Alabama facility.

The company may also double its current work force so it can handle more auto parts when the new facility opens in October.

Glovis Alabama originally invested $12 million in Montgomery to build the 250,000-square-foot warehouse for storing parts manufactured by other companies. Those parts are used at the Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama (HMMA) plant, where Sonatas and Santa Fes are built. HMMA is funding the new building and yard addition for Glovis.

To handle its inbound logistical tasks in facilities twice the size of the original plant, Glovis Alabama is expected to hire about 170 people, bringing the total local work force to 350, according to Liz Lindemann, human resources director.

Each of the vehicles that HMMA produces includes nearly 3,000 parts shipped here from South Korea and other outsourced suppliers from throughout North America.

More than 145 auto parts from some regional tier one and tier two companies are often stored in the Glovis warehouse.

To make further efficiency savings, when they deliver inbound materials to some suppliers, they also pickup finished parts and bring them to the assembly plant or container yard for their eventual journey into HMMA's assembly line.

This huge movement of transporting parts for assembly into the finished vehicles is when Glovis Alabama goes into action.

Glovis Alabama is an inbound logistics and warehousing company, not to be confused with Glovis America, its next-door neighbor, which is an outbound processing center for moving the finished vehicles by truck, rail or boat to their showroom destinations.

Glovis America currently contracts with 300 workers, according to Patrick Foran, Glovis America's human resources director in Montgomery. Glovis America is also expanding to handle its services to Hyundai.

Glovis Alabama tracks the containers of more than 3,000 incoming auto parts that must be warehoused before they are sent in proper sequence to arrive "just-in-time," and "just-in-sequence" at the Hyundai general assembly shop.

The service uses a "pull system strategy" to manage the inventory of auto parts. The basic concept is to reduce expenses by eliminating unnecessary logistics costs within the plant and excessive inventory management costs.

Glovis Alabama, LLC, begun in 2003 as a third-party inbound logistics management company in Montgomery to support HMMA. Glovis Alabama is a wholly owned U.S. subsidiary of Glovis Co. Ltd., a global logistics management company based in Seoul, South Korea.