Our global logistics relationship with Jaguar Land Rover allowed us to monitor their suppliers and their impact on the aftermarket service that Jaguar Land Rover owners were receiving.

The supplier was a major provider of bumpers to the entire UK automotive industry and they were now finding it challenging to meet the aftermarket needs of Jaguar Land Rover, as a result of the increased demand across the industry for new build cars. Resolving this through increasing their capacity, by creating a new factory, would have been a slow and very expensive solution.

Being aware of a potential problem facing both companies, we decided to take full advantage of Unipart’s engineering knowledge and set out to devise an innovative solution.

The idea was for Unipart to take over the responsibility for producing all non-current bumpers for the aftermarket.  But rather than doing this within a new and separate factory, we set out to achieve this task entirely within our existing Jaguar parts distribution centre, in order to optimise the handling and stock control of these very bulky items.  Drawing upon our Group’s manufacturing skills and expertise, 38 machines were received, installed and commissioned over a two week period, to allow new production to get swiftly underway.

The implementation of this innovative idea had an immediate impact on restoring service levels. It resulted in Jaguar Land Rover customer back orders of 300 different lines being reduced to zero within a month.

This very different solution, which continues today, has also delivered a 30% reduction in bumper inventory and a 50% reduction in storage space for Jaguar Land Rover.

 

One sector that has clearly witnessed the dramatic consequences of a fast changing world is that of the traditional bookseller.  The growth of online sales and electronic media has transformed people’s access to entertainment and information.  The historical advantages of the conventional bookshop were now being fast eroded.

In the past, the sector had problems with forecasting, resulting in frequent re-ordering from suppliers and high costs in operational handling, creating long customer fulfilment times of over a week – a rather poor customer experience.

Waterstones needed to rebuild their competitive difference across their 300 shops and this meant finding a new way of speeding up their ability to get stock to stores, while also increasing the number of individual titles in each store. It required a simultaneous reduction in overall stock levels, to allow books to be presented in a new, customer-friendly and visually appealing way.

The Unipart team began by focusing on the key elements of organisational design, cost-to-serve, and supply chain flow. The team made major changes to sales and order processing which significantly increased forecasting accuracy to 98%.  This greatly improved relationships with suppliers, thus creating the potential for much greater use of a centralised inventory and the opportunity to significantly drive down costs.

A new 8am next day delivery service was implemented for shops ordering by 4pm the previous day, from the centralised stock holding of 65,000 titles, thus increasing the availability of both new titles and old favourites across the 300 shop estate. This allowed the inventory holding to reduce by £5 million, while the ability to order for next day delivery increased on-shelf availability, subsequently increasing sales. The shops now had more space and a wider range of titles, as well as flexibility to tailor their range to their local market.

Today, in-store and online, Waterstones handles in excess of 30 million books and 10 million related products per annum. The Unipart/Waterstones partnership swept the board at the 2015 European Supply Chain Excellence Awards, winning three awards as a result of the supply chain transformation work and a fourth for Unipart, who were awarded Best 3PL.

 

 

 

 

Sky has built a strong position in the UK as a satellite television provider but as with so many markets it is being challenged by changes in technology and new entrants.

Retaining customers in such a highly competitive and fast changing market is never easy. A key component of customer satisfaction is the reliability of the equipment provided by their broadcast provider. So when Sky asked us to take on the additional responsibility for repairs, we saw an opportunity that would go far beyond simply repairing their Skyboxes more swiftly and efficiently.

We aspired to be much more than a basic repair supplier and saw an opportunity that was bigger than simply improving the quality and cost of the repairs process.

That opportunity was about reducing the long term need for this process by capturing the root causes of failure and relaying them back to the manufacturers.

As a world-first for set top box repair, we introduced an automated test programme with over 140 points being checked in a thirty minute period, complemented by Flying Probe technology to further diagnose faulty components on PCB Boards at high-speed.

The use of this cutting edge technology provided not only accurate and objective testing to ensure correct diagnosis and repair but, importantly, also generated extensive data for further analysis. This test data was utilised to link our repair teams directly with field engineers and Sky Manufacturing, so that they could learn from each other and implement continuous improvement.

The insights and knowledge thus gained provided important input into the future product development and manufacture of the Skybox, resulting in significantly improved reliability for Sky’s eleven million customers.

Unipart Rail were invited to collaborate with London Underground to create a ‘Model Line’ satellite depot, handling London Underground’s infrastructure materials.

Bob Martin, London Underground’s Track and Signalling Warehouse Manager said the challenge was: “to establish London Road, one of the key operational centres in the city, as a platform from which to deliver best operational practice within the industry.”

Unipart Rail Expert Practitioners brought their logistics skills and experience together with London Underground’s knowledge of the industry; their combined expertise identified five areas that required their attention:

• Better understanding of the quality and value of materials.
• Identification of materials and their fitness for purpose.
• Improvements in the storage and product layout of the depot.
• Stricter standards on issues affecting Health and Safety.
• Redesign of operational processes and controls.

The team created a carefully structured action programme, which brought together the latest thinking and operational practice to tackle each of the five problem areas.

The action programme included the introduction of a new inventory management system and the removal of any unwanted products. A new purpose-built racking system was installed and new ‘product flow’ procedures were bought in that identified and categorised products by usage rate.

The whole depot received a much needed ‘facelift’, to portray a clean and modern image.

The transformation was remarkable, and Unipart Rail and London Underground established the London Road depot as an industry benchmark in operational practice.

The new system provided London Underground with greater understanding of their ‘product flow’ procedures, and the practicality of the depot layout was dramatically improved.

London Underground is now planning to roll-out the use of this system into other depots.

 

MetLase is a joint venture between Rolls-Royce and Unipart. It is a mechanical engineering consultancy whose technology-based approach and patented tooling techniques enables the design and manufacture bespoke engineering solutions with speed and precision.

This case study describes how MetLase created two full engine sets of turbine seal strips, at lead-times previously unobtainable.

Introduction

Solution

Benefits

Summary