Overview

The company is the largest manufacturer of office furniture in the U.K. and one of the largest in the European Union. It is generally regarded as having the most modern, state of the art factories in Europe and presently employs over 1,000 persons. At this time Bisley has two manufacturing facilities, in Bisley and Newport, which occupy 64,000 square metres. In addition, it has a showroom in Great Portland Street, London together with sales offices in France, Holland and Germany.

In this article Graeme Winship, Director of Logistics at Bisley talks to us about how they have benefited from their TOPS Maxload Pro software.

Problem and Solution

Graeme comments: “Bisley Office Furniture provides steel storage solutions around the world and part of our efficiencies is to ensure we maximise vehicle fill/utilisation for all our customers. Following a review of the operations we realised that our planning processes were manual and that we often had vehicle overfill or underfill. We undertook a review of software available to assist in the process and came across the MaxLoad Pro software distributed in the UK by AutoLogic Systems. After comparing a number of different solutions we soon realised that this would fit our requirements and that we could up-date our planning process and more importantly provide greater accuracy to our loaders and for our customers.

The software is currently used for a variety of applications. We can provide customers with accurate order plans so they can determine the best fill of vehicles, which allows us to manage down freight costs and maximise the vehicle fill. Further more, for multiple deliveries we can provide accurate loading plans to our warehouse staff so that we can reduce errors during loading and take away discrepancies on loads due to poor loading practices. On receipt of orders Bisley run the customer requirements through the software to reduce processing times and provide greater accuracy on planning.”

The Outcome

Graeme adds: “A key element and benefit of the software has been the improved accuracy on loading information within our business and for customers. We are now confident in the planning process and have managed down a number of costs. Significantly the vehicle utilisation has improved by 12% and our freight costs have reduced by 8%. We anticipate this increasing further as our data becomes more accurate and staff get used to the system and improved processes.”