ENGINEERINGCRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE SOLUTIONSISOURJOB. BUILDINGSTRONGER COMMUNITIESISOURPASSION.

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“We’re in what we call our controlled launch, which means we’re moving some orders out of there. We’re inducting inventory, but we’re doing it on an extremely small scale,” he said. “It’s almost pressure testing the system.” Processes will ramp up as it passes “proof points” that show the system is ready for large-scale work.

“It’s unbelievable,” Zutz said of the new building. “It’s bigger than the Amazon building.”

A fitting gesture, since Digi-Key’s website touts the company as having the “World’s largest selection of electronic components.”

“We have a tremendous amount that we ship, some 27,000 to 30,000 packages a day,” Zutz said. “If we put all our stuff in a system and it doesn’t work, that’s a tremendous risk to our business and customers that depend on us. We’re just going to be very, very careful about (how we do this).”

The plan is to be at full-scale by sometime in August.

As with other businesses, Digi-Key has felt the straps of the supply chain, and the rising costs of products, but perhaps not as much as other companies. That’s due in large part to its massive inventory, which he likens to a bank. But over time it started to feel the pinch.

“We had the inventory, but now we’re (challenged) just like everybody else” on some items, Zutz said.

Zutz said the distribution center, at this point in time, will likely not create a lot of new jobs, but it will allow for new kinds of positions that employees can transition into.

“Our work is different than it used to be and some of the inefficiencies we have currently, they’ll go away and different roles will be needed to take their place,” he said. He mentioned automation and the kinds of jobs needed to oversee that.

For now, the company is working on “reprogramming” the office space at headquarters.

“It’s not so much about social distancing and more about repro - gramming our facility to meet the needs of our future ways of working,” he said. “We’re looking at more collaborative space, more open spaces that allow for fewer (in-person employee) collisions, fewer cubicles, because people aren’t going to be here all of the time.”

Employees can reserve work spaces. The company is considering putting games in the facility, such as ping pong tables that employees can use on breaks, and amenities such as flavored water and other creature comforts that people have gotten used to while working from home over the past two years.

“It’s a pretty simple recipe, but it’s really reprogramming the facility to meet our new way of working,” Zutz said. “How we were set up before, that wouldn’t work now. We didn’t have much collaborative space. We just had meeting rooms, tons and tons of cubicles.”