When the lease on a logistics company's warehouse was expiring it presented them with an opportunity to rethink the whole operation.
Fullers Logistics is a Slough Trading Estate based warehousing and logistics operation. Their main customer is US confectionery giant Mars which is also located at Slough. In 1999 their leases on three traditional, low level warehouses were due to expire.
Two of those buildings were at Slough while a third was at Dunstable, Bedfordshire. In 1997 Fullers began to work with SEGRO and with Mars to plan for a single, highly automated building that would move their logistics operations into a more modern phase and bring significant savings and efficiencies for Mars.
Lawrence Doyle, contracts director at Fullers responsible for their Mars contracts, was part of the planning team. He tells how ideas were shared and developed. "We started to work with the concept in 1997. A project team was set up and we met once a fortnight with SEGRO in their offices. There was also a representative of Mars and myself. Once the building was well advanced we had fortnightly on site meetings."
Doyle describes the influence they had in the way the building was put together.
"Take the number of loading bay doors, for example. We changed the configuration in the light of operational requirements. We worked closely with SEGRO to get the maximum number of doors, in the right configuration that we needed for the operation. The site was of a finite size so the challenge was to fit the warehouse on to the site rather than to design the warehouse and then locate a site to fit it."
From planning to handover in October 1999 took two years. Like any project of this size there were a lot of people involved at various stages. There were challenges and frustrations to be overcome but in the end Doyle says that they came out well satisfied with the result.
"Today we have a 76,000 square foot, 10,400 pallet position semi-automated warehouse and head office facility. It's a high bay facility which is 16 metres to the eaves. To store and retrieve product we use six main riser cranes where the operator rises up with cranes to a particular location."
"It is computer driven," explains Doyle. "The system decides where a pallet goes and where it comes out from. The products are labelled and scanned as they are received at the warehouse and stored. From the bar coded label you know exactly where the pallet is stored."
This was a big cultural change for Fullers where warehouse staff needed to get used to the strict, inflexible process requirements of a computer driven system. But once the teething problems were dealt with the level of control and efficiency of just-in-time movement of raw materials and packaging to the Mars factory were greatly enhanced. The building was voted a success by all concerned. Doyle concludes, however, by adding that there is more to it than just a warehouse.
"The way the building was designed and built to blend with its surroundings was important. The building itself and the landscaping look very smart. It's a good environment in which to work. The standard and quality of the fittings that SEGRO provides are of a high quality. People really appreciate working here and it is important these days - it's all about the feel good factor."
At SEGRO we understand the importance of that feel good factor. Better buildings lead to satisfied customers and that is something that we try very hard to achieve. In the end it is better for the customer's business and, of course, it is better for ours as well.