Scott Pallets, a key division within the Scott Group, is a timber pallet and packaging solutions business. It operates from over thirty UK locations to manufacture and supply new pallets, reconditioned pallets, recovered pallets and timber packaging and cases.
Scott Pallets contacted Davies & Robson to undertake a full review of its pallet recovery operation, focusing on transport efficiency improvements within its inbound collection and outbound delivery flows. Scott Pallets wanted to understand where the inefficiencies were within its existing operation, and how these could be eliminated to improve vehicle utilisation and ultimately reduce overall transport cost. They also wanted to ensure that the transport model would be robust enough to incorporate any new business developments such as the new “Pallet Loop” service into the existing operation.
In addition, Scott Pallets asked Davies & Robson to review the existing management reporting suite to ensure that this was capturing the relevant information to drive the business forward and deliver appropriate business behaviours. This exercise also involved a review of organisational structure and core competencies.
Davies & Robson undertook a full analysis of the current operation, both using existing delivery and collection data, and also witnessing collections first-hand on a “driver observation day.” In addition to these two exercises, Davies & Robson also undertook a review of the market providing Transport Management Systems (TMS) solutions.
On completion of this analysis, Davies & Robson presented a comprehensive report to Scott Pallets with a list of recommendations that would make improvements to the existing operation, whilst ensuring that new business solutions could also be incorporated into the model. The recommendations demonstrated significant improvements to both vehicle utilisation and driver utilisation. There were also additional recommendations relating to the interface between transport and yard operations and fleet optimization.
A TMS solution was recommended to Scott Pallets to underpin the operational improvements identified and deliver the transport planning opportunities. Finally, recommendations were made relating to the critical KPIs needed to support the operational changes, and also to the structure and competencies required to support operational changes and deliver the maximum benefit of a TMS.
“The report and analysis proved invaluable in helping the business put together a strategy for the future. There were a number of short, medium and long-term actions that we can now implement to help drive improvements and cope with the considerable growth we are seeing. Davies & Robson experience and ‘hands on’ approach really created an appetite for change”.