Caterpillar

We took a visit to Caterpillar Thursday morning. We had originally planned to visit the European Commission, but because of scheduling conflicts between the EU and NATO, we were forced to cancel our visit to the Commission and scheduled at trip to visit Caterpillar instead. This visit was unique because I hadn’t researched Caterpillar at all and didn’t know much about the company. I learned that Caterpillar is a massive corporation with a very developed and impressive distribution network.

We toured Caterpillar’s distribution center located in Belgium. No manufacturing is performed at the facility, but rather parts are shipped from the Belgian warehouse to Caterpillar dealers across Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Several hundred thousand parts are contained in the Belgian facility, which is the second largest distribution facility owned by Caterpillar in the world, taking its position only behind a facility in Morton, Illinois. The facility is so large that an entire division is devoted to cardboard boxes and pallets in packaging. There are more than 13 separate loading docks. An automated inventory system stores and retrieves a large number of the smaller parts and operates in a similar fashion to the BARN at the Merrill-Cazier Library on USU campus.

I thought the Caterpillar facility was very impressive. The logistics and business organization skills employed in the Caterpillar operation were obviously top notch. Caterpillar employs a six sigma operations system to increase efficiency and reduce mistakes, which means that Caterpillar maintains the goal to conduct its operations error-free 999,997 out of a million times. This is a very daunting goal, but after touring the facility, I’m convinced that if they don’t meet the standard, they are close. Caterpillar is a well-oiled machine.

Caterpillar has a large incentive to make sure their operation is error-free. Our tour guide told us that when a gear in a caterpillar industrial mine support was found to be defective, Caterpillar had to recall all the gears in all the products previously supplied as well as finance the manufacturing and distribution of replacement gears at great cost to the company. Errors in the caterpillar line are very costly, and as such, Caterpillar is rightly dedicated to making sure the operation is safe and error-free.

In a side note, I learned a bit about the current political turmoil in Belgium, something about which I was completely unaware.

I was impressed with Caterpillar. It was a terrific visit.