Supply Chain Digital Magazine November 2024 | Page 20

» I ’ ve been in the industry for a long time . It was , and still is , quite male -dominated , but certainly 20 years ago – when I joined the industry – it was a very different place . My leadership style has also changed a lot over the years . I don ’ t feel the need to emulate the management or leadership styles that I witnessed when I joined the industry . My personal leadership style is very collaborative and about empowering people to make decisions and bring ideas to the table .

» We ’ re a bit of an unusual 3PL . We offer flexibility and agility and we don ’ t seek out long-term commitments from customers . If they wish to have a long-term commitment we can provide that , but we want to ensure we add resilience to their supply chain . So , we work with manufacturers , retailers , e-commerce and other 3PLs to offer that flexibility . We never say no – there will always be space and operational capacity available to support them .

» When we started the business a couple of years ago , we were in a luxurious position because there was no background or history we needed to conform to . It was a case of starting with a completely blank page and creating everything our customers needed from the ground up . When we look at inventory management part of the operation , for example , we could have gone into a more traditional set-up with stock controllers , but we were concerned about labour shortages in the market and thought we ’ d do things a little bit differently . We looked at various innovations to find the right solution and , ultimately , we partnered with Dexory which provides a robot that scans your entire warehouse everyday . It gives you full visibility of the inventory and also a digital platform where you can gain a lot of insights from the data that it supplies . As a result , we have a very happy workforce because they don ’ t need to spend their time checking things just in case they ’ re incorrect . They only need to intervene when there ’ s a problem . That ’ s one approach , but elsewhere we have solutions for specific sectors or clients . We have an AutoStore in one of our facilities for a particular type of client and we ’ re also investing to fully automate one of our four warehouses in Rugby , UK , with a pallet shuttle and mobile robotics .