Warehouse revamp boosts radiator deliveries

Paul Schofield, warehouse & distribution manager, manages the NDC for Stelrad. He starts by telling us that the NDC was pretty huge anyway – built originally in 2003 at a cost of £4 million, with a capacity to store 300,000 radiators at any one time, ready to be picked, transported and delivered within 72 hours across the UK.

Changes to the racking and working layout of the NDC began back in August 2016, and work started in November 2016 to add an additional 10,000 square feet full height extension to the warehouse, making it a total of 160,000 sq. ft., housing 17,000 pallet locations. The NDC and its team of 65 people, make 50,000 customer deliveries a year to more than 2,000 different customer locations around the UK.

The operation uses a new fleet of lift trucks that can cope with moving radiators up to 11 metres in height and all of which are fitted with cameras to assist lifting. The NDC deals with 55 different radiator ranges that have more than 3165 product codes. Driven by WMS, with a comprehensive fleet management system in place, the environment is clean, tidy and organised.

The racking is from Link 51 and was supplied by Avanta UK based in Leeds. Stelrad uses MHE supplied by the Forkway Group who has been preferred supplier for a number of years. Models include the Yale MR20 HD reach truck;  Yale 25VX  counterbalance – truck; and the Yale PPT (manrider) MP20 X.

The total weight of radiators moved in the NDC in a year is 54 million kilograms.

“We have a policy of continual improvement,” says Paul Schofield. “We are always looking for ways of improving what we offer and upping our performance when it comes to meeting the needs of our customers. This extension will simply give us even more opportunity to increase the number of ranges and radiators we have in stock, ready to be drawn down by the merchants – an increase from 300,000 to 360,000 radiators on the shelves – waiting to head out of the door to any of the more than 2,000 locations we deliver to. The new extension was fully functional from April 2017."

In addition, the newly extended NDC will see increased loading efficiencies through less travel, provide greater availability of prime pick locations at floor level, improving pick efficiencies and it will enable a full review of stock location configuration to ensure hot spot areas – those where the most commonly ordered radiators are located – are constantly up to date.