The Supply Chain Consulting Group Reviews Britvic Warehouse Operations
Britvic is a leading soft drinks company, which spans across four markets, located in Great Britain (GB), Ireland, France and Brazil, with a strong portfolio of its own iconic brands, including Robinsons, Tango, J2O, drench, MiWadi, Ballygowan, Teisseire, Fruité, Maguary and DaFruta; It is subsequently the largest supplier of branded still soft drinks and the number two supplier of branded carbonated soft drinks in GB, and a recognised industry leader in Ireland and France, selling a number of established soft drinks brands, under exclusive agreements with PepsiCo, including Pepsi, 7UP, SoBe and Mountain Dew.
Using a clear strategy of organic growth and international expansion based on creating and building scalable brands, Britvic’s management team increased the size of their warehouse in previous years. Following their site expansion, Britvic occupy two adjoining warehouses, one directly linked to the production lines, and both linked to an external covered loading area. Site operations are split into two: Production and logistics; of which both operations are responsible for clearing the production lines.
In Leeds, Britvic’s current levels of activity were capable of being handled, however, operational issues started to become apparent, including several minor, but still concerning ‘near-miss’ incidents within the operation.
The occurrence of these incidents led to senior management’s attention being directed towards this area to ensure nothing more serious occurred; whilst an additional issue arose, with regards to picked-order-marshalling, and space constraints around the despatch bay, leading to products being unsatisfactorily marshalled throughout the warehouse.
Due to their detailed knowledge of, and extensive experience within the Logistics Industry, Britvic appointed the Supply Chain and Logistics Specialists at The Supply Chain Consulting Group (SCCG) to conduct a review of their warehouse efficiency and safety of their Leeds site, to ensure that the warehouse operation was working to the highest levels of both safety and efficiency.
The SCCG team conducted a data review and analysis to produce base model for number of product lines required and order picking profile, in preparation of design exercise; Reviewed their operational design – in terms of production and evaluation of layout/operational solutions to identify the most suitable solution for the Britvic Leeds requirements; Reviewed their operational and system processes to produce detailed standard operational processes for the proposed operation, and finally presented the recommended solution to Britvic, including all SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) and equipment specifications.
Conducting this work was necessary, and enabled SCCG to identify failings in Britvic’s system and potential solutions, priority of which, was to redesign the picking environment, to enable efficient product handling, whilst simultaneously facilitating improved, and high-levels of safety; including a thorough review of the materials handling equipment used to pick orders.
