This global consumer electronics brand’s national distribution centre (NDC) for the UK and Ireland was based in the East Midlands. NYK provided the warehousing and UK transport. The contract was worth circa £12m per annum, employed 100 FTEs, 200k sq ft, 8 dedicated vehicles, with the majority of the deliveries handled by NYK’s Distribution fleet.
In May the client’s NDC relocated with a break even target for the following year. However following the relocation between May and December, the contract lost circa £1.5m the majority of the loss occurring outside of the peak Xmas season.
In December Proffitt Consultants were engaged for 3 months by the Managing Director to review the operation and give momentum to the profit improvement plans. Kevin Higgs of Proffitt Consultants headed up a team made up of the existing contract management team and a number of supply chain experts.
Operationally the principal outputs of the analysis and supply chain modelling were;
- Align resources with demand profile
- Revised processes that were line balanced
- Revised warehouse layout aligned to the demand profile
- Visual KPIs
The nature of these changes involved a lot of difficult decisions for the management team. In order to successfully deliver these changes I needed to work closely with the management team.
Commercially the principal outputs were;
- Agreed tariffs for additional services
- Revised picking tariff that more accurately reflected the inputs
- Risk if actual demand materially below forecast taken by customer
