In the highly competitive world of Home Shopping, Grattan is acknowledged as one of the leading players, with the largest single mail-order warehouse facility in the UK. Unsurprisingly, the key to maintaining that leading edge has been continual investment in state of the art warehousing technology, with the core strategic aim of driving down customers’ waiting time for orders.

The first milestone in this process was the original transformation of 20.6 hectares of industrial dereliction to an 80,000 square metre warehouse and distribution complex in a mere 26 months. Grattan’s staff delight in recounting some of the more interesting statistics associated with the project, which include:-

• 2,000 cubic metres of toxic waste were neutralized and removed from existing dye works foundations
• 10,000 cubic metres of crushed TV’s were removed from the site
• 3 disused mine shafts were capped off
• 4,500 tonnes of grout was pumped into a warren of tunnels that existed from old stone workings ……

………….and the list goes on!

Accompanying the creation of the new centralized facility, which is based in Listerhills, Bradford, was a clear re-focus in terms of the IT infrastructure needed to support such an undertaking. The main requirement for change was the need to further improve stock availability and service to customers in terms of time to process and deliver an order. A further requirement was to change the structure of computer systems from an assumption of a single company, single customer, single warehouse to a multi-company, multi-customer type, multi-warehouse philosophy. Two man years of Grattan’s own programmers’ time was devoted to the creation of new systems and processes, based upon a DEC VAX mainframe computer, which resulted in:-

1. a real time stock system, whereby deliveries can be received during the day and the stock made available to the customer far earlier.
2. orders taken during the day up to a certain time are processed and packed that day and , for telephone orders, delivered within a 48 hour cycle.
3. new processes for handling orders and passing information to Merchandise Information Systems and Supplier Accounting are having a positive impact on the overall chain of supply.

The IT systems support a warehouse infrastructure which employs an extremely high level of automation, particularly in the carton and pallet high bays. Grattan worked closely with another Bradford-based organisation, Belgravium, to develop wireless real-time operation for the Company’s man-rider cranes.

The entire process actually centres around the support of discrete catalogue runs. Any activity improvement that effectively extends the ‘life’ of the catalogue has an obvious positive effect on the Grattan bottom-line. The process commences with Grattan’s own merchandising teams deciding upon the content of the Catalogue. Once appropriate supplier contracts have been negotiated and supplier stock accumulated, suppliers are required to make appointments prior to the delivery of the merchandise.

Providing the subsequent delivery is acceptable, the merchandise is delivered to the Carton or Pallet Receiving Dock and unloaded to a conveyor system. Each box is bar coded and the information data captured. Following key verification, cartons are conveyed to the High Bay Carton Store for put-away. The original high bay carton store has been fully operational since 1989. Sixteen man-rider cranes, each equipped with data terminals, serve one aisle each. The store has a total storage capacity of over 350,000 cartons and throughput stands at some 2400 cartons per hour both in and out. Each crane takes on board 16 cartons as a batch for putaway in the store. The operational sequence is:-

• Computer drives crane to first pick up location.
• Pick first carton from rack and read bar-code.
• Forward location bar-code label provided and affixed to top of carton.
• Picked carton put on crane output conveyor.
• Putaway first input carton in space left from pick.
• Read bar-code to confirm putaway to mainframe.
• Computer drives crane to next pick location.

Cranes are positioned and moved between locations by computer. The driver is there to manipulate the various shapes and sizes of received cartons.

The mode of operation employed in the carton store area has been phenomenally successful, resulting in a recent decision to invest a further £4 million in extending the area with the specific objective of prolonging life of Grattan’s catalogues. The extension has taken the current bulk storage area from the sixteen aisles outlined previously to 22, the extra capacity enabling the life of the ‘Look Again’ and ‘Grattan’ Catalogues to be extended by five weeks. The new carton store facility, which became operational in late 1996, now has a capacity of 480,000 cases.

Commenting on the new system, Grattan’s customer operations and warehousing director , Norman Finnigan says : “The decision to build the extension was in response to our rapidly increasing sales which have applied extra pressure on existing stock holding facilities. The key to the economics of the handling system is the error free, extremely high pick-place rate we can achieve, which typically runs at over 3,300 cycles per hour. Customers should see immediate benefits with regard to improved service and the choice to purchase items further into the season.

The Belgravium equipment has contributed greatly to the smoothness of the operation. As it has been trouble-free, we had no hesitation in utilising further Belgravium terminals in the new extension. The use of wireless terminals, auto guided vehicles, several fully automatic cranes and portable data capture units, has provided us with a real-time capability that we feel is unrivalled within our market sector.”