The manufacturer and distributor of a range of popular snacks in the UK has adopted new warehouse operating systems in order to deal with the increase of capacity and to better organise and manage the logistics at one of the company’s sites. KP the manufacturer and distributor of products such as McCoy’s, Phileas Fogg, Hula Hoops, Pom-Bears and KP Nuts operates from 30 different locations and employs approximately 8,000 staff across the UK and in Europe.
KP has experienced a period of consistent high product demand, which is great news for the company but has led to a number of logistical challenges in order to manage the high volume of products being moved through the company’s warehousing systems. The updates that have been implemented have taken place at the manufacturer’s Ashby-de-la-Zouche. At this location, the company’s warehousing facility is located adjacent to a major KP production facility. This factory has increased its volume of production and the adjacent warehouse no longer offered the capacity that was needed to accommodate the increased flow of stock that was moving through the warehouse.
The warehouse originally had a layout that included standard pallet racking and was operated by a range of traditional counterbalanced forklifts and reach trucks. The company had to consider a range of different solutions, among them was moving to a large facility in order to cope with the increase in volume. However Flexi Warehouse Solutions managed to come up with a solution that could viably allow the manufacturer to remain in their warehousing unit as well as managing with the increased production from the nearby factory.
Flexi Warehouse Systems is the Systems Division of Narrow Aisle Ltd. The solution provided by this logistics company included replacing the racking that was used previously with integrated two-deep storage systems and operating the warehouse with a fleet of Flexi StorMAX truck units, which are better suited to working in smaller spaces. In order to create even more storage capacity, the Warehousing Systems company also recommended narrowing the aisles of the facility.
Previously, the warehouse was managed in a way that inhibited the throughput speeds of the company, However the logistics solution that has been offered by Flexi allows for an increased capacity. The trucks that have been integrated into the warehouse allow for a 50% increase in the number of pallet locations that are managed when using the conventional reach trucks. This warehousing systems solution has also created a 15% increase in pallet movements carried out per truck which reflects a significant boost in efficiency at the warehouse.
