A focus on collaborative working with our merchant partners is paying dividends across the business.
The concerted effort to develop supply chain relationships with key customers is now resulting in benefits for areas such as forecasting, plant, warehouse and sales.
It follows the creation three years ago of the Supply Chain Team Leader role, which was taken up by Colette Jones.
The team’s function is to work with our key supply chain partners and cross-functionally within our own organisation to ensure stock availability in the market.
Working together helps to ensure our end to end supply chain is smooth and achieves our business objectives while supporting our customers.
The approach is consistently reviewed in order to change as our customers and our business change.
Colette said: “We have spent a lot of time developing relationships with our supply chain counterparts in Travis Perkins, Saint Gobain (Graham) and Wolseley.
“It enables us to challenge their stock profiles, and in general they are very open to our suggestions in terms of additional stock orders.”
She added: “We work with our customers and our forecast team to challenge the customer forecasts and ordering patterns, particularly where they are very inconsistent.
“There is still a long way to go in terms of achieving an improved forecast from customers but they are keen to work with us as they understand the importance in terms of our manufacturing planning and our ability to supply.”
Working together ensures orders come through in a way that’s efficient for warehouse to pack and load.
Supply Chain also work with both our distribution and that of our customers to resolve issues and particularly to make sure that we have sufficient delivery slots into our customers to keep on top of the order book.
The team work with merchants to help make sure they are holding the right products and the right depth, providing information for housebuilders’ requirements and a guide on commercial product. All of this works to ensure we have good availability in the market place and provides good service to the end customer.
Colette said: “When my role was created, the team already existed and the relationships were developing.
“My role has allowed a dedicated focus on this area in recognition of the importance of the supply chain relationships.
“But we still have lots more to do. We are constantly looking for ways to improve working with our customers.”