Delivering Best Practice Logistics


Whitbread owns leading UK brands for hotels, restaurants and health & fitness, welcoming over 8 million customers each month

The Challenge

• Whitbread food logistics were delivering food and drinks to over 350 outlets once, twice or three times daily. They were experiencing high levels of missed line items, returned goods and product 'damage/loss'
• 'First time, on time, in full' deliveries had fallen to less than 75% thus putting the business under severe costs and operational pressures
• ProActive were required to analyse the business, apply best practice thinking and develop an optimal solution.

The ProActive Approach

• The team found a number of 'problem areas'  including: innkeepers receiving goods they had not ordered due to poor order controls; 'bucking the system' was becoming the norm; damaged returns were 15% of deliveries; order integrity was lost due to inconsistent use of outers and pallets.
• Together with the client managers, ProActive redesigned the consignment process to ensure order integrity and prevent over deliveries; introduced consistent picking by tote; established a new warehouse operation layout; developed the optimum delivery process and 'back of truck' practices to ensure that best practice operations were implemented

The Results

• Improvements in cost, delivery accuracy, damages and environmental impact
• Total distribution costs reduced by 26%
• 12% reduction in damage/loss
• Accuracy of delivery improved by 23%
• 15% reduction in environmental impact

"Working with ProActive brought significant best practice knowledge to our business. The depth of experience and hands on approach was extremely valuable"  - Director of Food Services