Drastic changes to customers’ ordering patterns reportedly gave rise to some head scratching at VBH’s sales and distribution centre in Swansea recently. The Swansea centre serves VBH’s customers in Wales and south west England, and it had become apparent that more stock needed to be held locally, to help react most efficiently to the requirements of customers whose hardware uptake had rapidly increased or, in some cases, had become erratic.
The focus was to ensure that sales orders from Welsh and south western customers in 2022 and beyond would be supplied complete, first time, from Swansea, without the need to ship part orders from other VBH sites. Floor area was at maximum capacity, so Dave Prout, VBH’s operations manager – Swansea, and his team decided that the only way was up!
They designed and installed high-level picking spaces and pallet racking, to take full advantage of the building’s height. The redesign has allowed for a deeper stock holding of VBH Swansea’s most popular lines, including those from the GreenteQ brand, and has created an extra 120 pallet spaces, with no loss of picking shelves for smaller, slower moving products.
As part of the warehouse upgrade, VBH has also invested in a new, high-level order picker, to be used in the narrow aisle design layout. The picker is capable of reaching all levels of racking, and is computer guided, to allow for safe working in narrow aisles.
Dave said: “The whole changeover was carried out in just two weeks, and we are happy to say that disruption to the depot’s customers was kept to an absolute minimum. In fact, we are very proud to say we never missed one consignment throughout the whole process.” To find out more about VBH’s products and services, and to get in touch with the team at VBH Swansea, visit vbhgb.com, email sales@vbhgb.com, or call 01792 794 556.
