shd excellence in logistics Office Depot l Consolidation equals success
Mike McCreesh, head of supply chain at Office Depot UK and Ireland, says the way to meet current and future performance targets and legislation is to look at consolidation amongst suppliers and to invest in relevant automation.
Both public and private sector organisations are facing increasing pressure to dramatically cut costs, while at the same time ensuring their supply chain structure and practice invests sufficiently in reducing carbon emissions. Agreeing a formal approach in meeting these requirements is necessary in order to generate long- term value relationships between ourselves and our customers. One significant element of this approach involves consolidating our supplier
pool (in order to allow a core offering of 10,000 essential products) which, in turn, allows us to consolidate orders for customers.
As a way of facilitating this, we have recently invested in vertical carousel machines which provide efficient warehouse indexing solutions for our goods. The picking mechanisms have increased the amount of lines that can be picked per hour from a rate of 30 (when this had to be done manually) to 100 when using the electronic system. Adopting this approach is a vital component of our readiness to assist in meeting the need to reduce the frequency of deliveries and freight handling for larger corporate and public sector customers who utilise Office Depot’s services.
The needs of small businesses are a suitable fit to the Viking offering, whose model has been specifically tailored for this market. An example of this is a same-day delivery service specifically provided to SMEs, in order to ensure their operations can continue without disruption.
Providing this level of service means we have to work closely with our consolidated supplier list to ensure that the products available are as diverse as possible and based on the batched choices most popular with key industry sectors. In turn, this allows us to use systems which incorporate the core ordering patterns for previous customers, to ensure a quick turnaround in terms of getting orders dispatched as quickly and accurately as possible, as well as streamlining delivery frequencies. Costs are also rationalised by focusing on reducing the number of branded items in favour of own-brand products which serve exactly the same purpose. Our sales force has been particularly proactive in introducing this focus to public sector customers in order to stimulate cost efficiencies.
We can hold items to reflect ordering patterns and consolidate orders to achieve transport efficiency. At the front end we can deliver direct to customers’ desks, straight into their stock cupboard or in any other way they’d prefer.
Marrying prior knowledge of what customers require, while being flexible enough to tailor our approach to incorporate specific requirements, helps differentiate our service levels and ensure that our customers’ fast moving needs are met and actually exceeded in terms of keeping costs at a minimum for the end user. ●
www.officedepot.co.uk 16 ShD December 2011
www.PressOnShD.com
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