Handling everything from the smallest nuts and bolts right up to full-size truck cabs, PACCAR Parts newly expanded Bayswater Parts Distribution Centre promises superior service for PACCAR customers across Australia.
PACCAR Parts’ giant warehousing, manufacturing and Parts Distribution Centre (PDC) in the Melbourne suburb of Bayswater has benefited from a major investment and expansion designed to accommodate an even wider range of parts to support the company’s dealers and customers throughout Australia.
The Bayswater site, which has been the home of Kenworth truck manufacturing in Australia since 1971, with more than 80,000 Kenworth trucks built there over the years, is the company’s main Australian operation, sharing distribution duties with PACCAR’s recently expanded distribution centre in Brisbane.
The development is the latest step in PACCAR’s goal of keeping Aussie trucks moving by further improving the time it takes for essential parts to reach dealers, said PACCAR Parts General Manager Mark Santschi.
The multimillion-dollar project has been some four and a half years in the making, from when the idea was first approved to the initial stages of construction in July 2023, and subsequent completion in December 2024.
“The original PDC was built in 1985 and then extended on in 1996 when it more than doubled in size. With this update we’ve increased it by nearly 50 per cent again to 15,700 square metres,” said Bayswater PDC Manager Kylie Kurczewski.
“To be able to continue to support our customers into the future, we needed space to hold more inventory to be able to get parts to our dealers faster. We had inventory stored at offsite facilities which is obviously not as efficient and easy to handle. So, we were already bursting at the seams with the volumes that we were holding.”
Santschi added that the expansion project drew on ideas and innovation from PACCAR’s other PDCs around the world.
These include a mezzanine level in the new facility, a spiral conveyor system, and motorised carts for ferrying parts.
“With the addition of the mezzanine, all parts that are up to 2kg are now stored there. There’s about 13,000 parts and when you consider that we’ve got about 27,000 parts in the warehouse, that’s a huge chunk of our parts volume now up in the mezzanine,” said Kurczewski.
“The other cool piece of technology in the new PDC is a spiral conveyor system. We use a lift to get all our inventory up into the mezzanine, but once we’ve picked it into individual boxes for the dealers, we load those boxes onto the conveyor which travels in a spiral direction from top-to-bottom, then loads into a conveyor where we can collect the parts and consolidate them.”
Another development designed to improve workplace health and safety is the introduction of electrically-powered motorised carts to ferry picked stock, and height-adjustable receiving benches that are safer and more ergonomic for team members of different statures.
“We pick stock into carts from the mezzanine and those carts are now motorised – they basically run on drill batteries and drive electrically – so the team no longer need to physically push the carts and product, which reduces the risk of shoulder injuries.
“In addition, all our new work benches for staff on the floor will be height adjustable, which is a luxury that usually only office staff have. This will really make it safer and more comfortable for everyone.”
Santschi says the new PDC is also more environmentally friendly, thanks to the fitment of rooftop solar panels and additional water storage tanks.
“The entire new section of the building has a 257-kilowatt rooftop solar system that enables us to capture energy from sunlight. There’s also 16 new water storage tanks in addition to the 12 we already had. The water that’s captured services grey water for toilets, gardening and things like that, with excess water pumped across to be used in the truck plant in the paint facility.”
He went on to explain, “We’re not yet fully linked up to our building management system which manages everything including lights, aircon, and so on. But once the solar panels are hooked into that system it should cut our energy consumption by about a third.”
The expansion of the Bayswater PDC means PACCAR is now better able to balance the workload between its Brisbane and Melbourne operations, following the doubling in size last year of PACCAR’s Brisbane PDC.
“It’s all about how quickly we can get our parts to our dealers. It doesn’t really matter which PDC it comes out of, it’s just who gets there the fastest,” said Kurczewski.
“While we’ve expanded here in Melbourne, we’re processing less lines because we’re sharing the load between the two PDCs to make us more effective at supporting our dealers. That also allows for future growth and ensures we’re not maxing out in one location.
“In terms of the benefit these changes are going to give us in the warehouse, there is not a single process that we do today, whether that be receiving, picking or shipping, that isn’t going to have a process improvement and an efficiency improvement.
Kurczewski continued, “We’ve redefined and are relaying all our pick paths to make them more efficient. We’ve also been able to adjust our aisle widths to make it safer, which also makes it more efficient. So, every process that we do to try and get our parts as efficiently to the dealers as possible will have an improvement.”
By expanding the Bayswater PDC so soon after the Queensland expansion PACCAR aims to increase customer uptime by adding a greater breadth of product and increasing its ability to service customers within 24 hours.
“PACCAR remains committed to providing outstanding product availability and customer service across Australia. With more than 250,000 available truck parts and accessories, we try to ensure our PDCs stock every imaginable part our customers may need,” said Santschi.
He explained that this was achieved in several ways including utilising the company’s highly efficient inventory management, innovative warehousing technologies such as that on display at the new Bayswater PDC, managed dealer inventory, and PACCAR’s extensive dealer network.
The PACCAR Parts dealer network stretches right across Australia covering all major routes and metro areas, with dealers stocking a wide range of genuine and branded replacement truck parts to fit all models of Kenworth and DAF trucks as well as mainstream US and European drivelines.