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John Guest
Warehouse Design
John Guest Group is the world’s largest manufacturer of push-in fittings for plumbing, the automotive industry and general industrial applications. The company, with factories at West Drayton employing approximately 750 staff, and a recently opened additional factory in Maidenhead, exports over 60% of sales to more than 50 countries world wide.
The group’s substantial growth has resulted in the warehouse at West Drayton being required for extra production. Davies & Robson was asked to assist the management team to determine how the new warehouse should be equipped and the systems that should be operated.
The products the company manufactures are small, and as such there are very few products that warrant a pallet for storage and movement. The largest unit load used was a small box used for despatch. For each SKU there could be one despatch box, or many. An additional complication was that the company required stock traceability. A unit load handling system was designed based on using a larger container to move and store several despatch boxes simultaneously where volumes required. This significantly reduced manual handling and administration.
The handling system and warehouse management procedures were designed to track batches of stock from the end of the production lines through to the warehouse, where a range of location sizes were configured to suit the various batch volumes. Procedures were designed for storage, consolidation of the pick face, order picking from multiple pick faces for each product dependant on the order volume, and despatch. Designs included the specification for a warehouse management system to support the operation based on RDT technology.
The solution provided the company with improved control and stock accuracy while at the same time reducing staffing requirements.
www.johnguest.com
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