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important strand and a lot of attention
is being paid to member support. The
continuing development of Palletways’
Digital Information Hub is a key
component here.
The Hub, in its way, exemplifies the
Palletways approach to efficiency,
added value and total transparency.
As Operations Director Mike Harrison
explains, the Hub has its origins in a
request from members for an effective
electronic invoicing system. Since
then it has expanded, very largely in
response to member and customer
requirements and now incorporates
perhaps 100 different applications
(although no-one has counted). Fully
installed at all four UK physical hubs,
it is rolled out in other territories as
appropriate.
The Hub can be used by Palletways
members and as appropriate customers
to track vehicles and consignments.
Live mapping reveals traffic congestion
– often before the ‘official’ notifications
are received, allowing controllers and
drivers to make live routing choices.
Vehicle and driver identity and status
are continually available.
At another level, a member dashboard
allows members to view the business
they have done with Palletways, and
what Palletways has done for them
with the status of every job from
booking to payment reconciliation.
POD is an important element in this
business – currently, 92.9% of POD is
reported within an hour of a delivery
arriving at destination. Looking forward,
members can use the Hub to predict
likely volumes and revenues, based on
previous weeks, and thus the resources
they may need to allocate.
Internally, the system also monitors
misloads, damage and other incidents –
attributable to individuals but incurring
a penalty in the overall staff bonus
pot, which is an incentive towards co-
operation rather than blame. At the
hubs the system is supported by unique
archway scanning systems which
capture still photographs of every pallet
passing into or out of the hub, plus
automated track and trace scanning.
The technology has both British and
FBI antecedents and elsewhere is
used for purposes as diverse as facial
recognition and scanning cheeses on
production lines!
Harrison adds, “these are all simple but
powerful tools to help members and
their customers provide total visibility
and security of every pallet in the
system, across Europe.”
More parochially, Lichfield is not only
the group HQ but the site of their
Midlands regional hub (one of four in
the UK). Further space was needed but
Palletways, says Harrison, has a policy
of gradual expansion at the right time
and place, and no ‘white elephants’.
By a stroke of good fortune, UK
Pallets, a subsidiary of UK Mail which
is moving out of this market, has just
vacated a large facility just 500m from
Palletways’ existing Lichfield site and,
understandably, the opportunity has
been snapped up. Working at present
under a Licence to Operate, until
dilapidations have been addressed and
a full lease signed, the new ‘Terminal
2’ offers 11,500m
2
of warehouse and
sortation space, 750m
2
of office space,
and much-needed room for a 300
vehicle trailer park. In full operation
T2 will increase Lichfield’s capacity
by around 8000 pallets per night.
Efficiencies should be improved – scope
for later local cut-off times, allowance for
later arrivals for ‘double runners’ and the
ability to top up loads from the existing
T1 facility (although this latter is slightly
compromised by 500m of public road,
which means that curtain-siders have
to be fully re-sheeted before moving
between the two sites). The emphasis
therefore is on choosing the right site
in the first place and minimising cross-
transfers – in a sense Lichfield now
comprises two complementary hubs,
rather than a single regional hub. “The
challenge,” says Harrison, “is to take the
right trucks away from T1 – for example,
double runners returning in peak time,
member trucks with large volumes that
can be served by T2 without top-up from
T1, and removing the most distant arrivals
from excessive queues.”
Back in T1 the pace, as midnight
approaches, is frenetic. A strict ‘no boots
on the floor’ policy sees drivers surrender
their keys and remain in their cabs, giving
full rein to the fork truck artists. These,
many of whom have been with Palletways
since the earliest days, show an uncanny
ability to identify pallets, read labels at
a distance, and continuously create and
modify loading plans for individual trucks
that respect the characteristics of each
pallet – no easy job given the number
of loads that appear to be seriously out
of balance or precariously packaged.
Incidents, though, are remarkably rare
although the variety of goods that
consignors see fit to palletise never
ceases to amaze. Standard fruit trees in
heavy ceramic pots, we understand – but
who orders small palletloads of split logs
for firewood from a distance that requires
transhipment in Lichfield? Still, it is all grist
to the successful Palletways mill.
Mike Harrison, Operations Director
16
Logistics Business Magazine | November 2015
PALLET NETWORKS