Shift control

If you were looking for somewhere on the outskirts of Nuneaton to hide five football pitches or 84 million golf balls, the Unipart Technology Logistics (UTL) warehouse would, until the end of June, have been as good a place as any.

Since then, as part of a groundbreaking 10-year contract worth over £650 million  between Vodafone UK and UTL, the building has transformed from an empty shell to the home of a new, fully integrated logistics and repair centre with the creation of 350 new jobs amongst a total workforce of 950.
Every Vodafone handset and SIM card, whether destined for the network ‘s flagship Oxford Street store or a customer ‘s home, will start its journey from UTL ‘s Nuneaton facility. The facility will handle every order  whether from retailer or catalogue  every handset repair, every request from a field engineer for a part, every vehicle installation. The lot. UTL has already ܘtouched ‘ an estimated 13.5 million customers during 2006 alone.
The 10-year deal represents the culmination of a relationship that began in 1999 when UTL was awarded a Pre-Sales Logistics contract that centralised Vodafone ‘s warehousing. A contract that ‘s grown over the years and which was previously serviced from a variety of locations.
According to Vodafone ‘s Kevin Paterson, the fact that the relationship has evolved over time means the two companies have developed a completely integrated approach helped by a totally transparent, ܘopen book ‘ policy.
UTL ‘s remuneration is largely determined by the customer experience it delivers, measured by the charmingly named ܘCustomer Delight Index. ‘ According to Paterson, UTL embraced the idea wholeheartedly.
Says Paterson, The contract means UTL can provide more of the services we need in-house. Costs will reduce, processes will be sped up and as a consequence, the customer experience will improve. That gives Vodafone a huge opportunity to reinvest and keep ahead of the competition.
The 10 year deal also means we ‘ve been able to review what UTL does for us directly and what it manages on our behalf to make sure we have the balance right. We ‘ll have greater control over processes because we won ‘t need to consult external suppliers, he adds.
Vodafone and UTL both share a common customer satisfaction goal  and as a result, we ‘ll both deliver enhanced profitability.
A vast enterprise
Step inside the Nuneaton facility  through its metal-detector-laced lobby  and you ‘re struck, not by individual people, forklifts, pallets, parcels, production lines and products  but by the sheer vastness of the enterprise. Mile after mile of shelving behind a protective firewall holds anything up to 22,000 pallets and their contents controlled by a state-of-the-art management system.
In one part of the building, 120 people across two shifts despatch anything from 50,000 to 60,000 packets a week to customers, with perhaps 20,000 items a day going to Vodafone ‘s 340-strong retail estate. In another area, a team is midway though applying 1.75 million stickers to boxes of phones. Somewhere else, handsets are being force-fed software upgrades before hitting the shelves. Phones are being re-boxed, rehoused, having their fascias changed, converted from pre-pay to contract and vice versa.
An army of workers surround a conveyor belt, picking and packing around 120 items per man-hour. Last year, before everything was brought under the one Nuneaton roof, they were managing fewer than 100.
Exploiting the synergies
According to pre sales logistics manager, Steve Walker, the productivity increase shouldn ‘t come as a surprise. Now we ‘re both in the same building, we can exploit the synergies between pre sales and post sales. We ‘re constantly sharing best practice. The Unipart way encourages us to learn from each other. We ‘ve brought all the best practices we ‘ve learnt across the group and distilled them into this location, he says.
Practices which mean that, today, the average time from an item entering the compound on the back of a truck to it being ready for sale is three hours. Last year it was five. Standard operating procedures see a part, ordered by a network engineer to repair a faulty base station on the road less than an hour after the order is phoned through.
Adds Steve, We make it our business to find out what the people we deliver to  our customers  expect from us. Because we talk the same language as the logistics people at, say, Argos, we can make sure they get stock from us in precisely the way they want it, at precisely the right time, with precisely the right documentation.
Another area of the Nuneaton site is given over to phone repair and refurbishment  so-called ܘpost sales ‘. Faulty phones are booked in before undergoing a full diagnostic check and RF test at the rate of one every 27 seconds. From there, handsets make their way to the repair lines. Parts are delivered from a central store to maximise productivity. Once fixed, all handsets undergo a data integrity check before being passed on for despatch. The unit aims for and achieves a one-day turnaround.
Equal partners
Explains production manager David Harper, Everyone ‘s an equal partner in the repair machine. Everyone ‘s empowered to make changes that benefit the overall outcome. We all realise the impact what we do has on the customer.
So who is the customer, Vodafone or the end user of their products? David is in no doubt. Our customers are the people who use Vodafone ‘s products. If we satisfy that customer, we satisfy Vodafone. It ‘s a dual approach. Our commercial relationship might be with Vodafone. However, the customer experience is directed by the quality of our repair.
The words ܘcreativity ‘ and ܘlogistics ‘ are seldom heard together, but UTL ‘s Vodafone account director, Claire Walters, believes they should. To stay ahead, you have to innovate. We are constantly looking at how what we do for Vodafone compares with the service delivered by other networks. We have a proposition team that ensures we keep Vodafone ahead.
Everyone being together on one site means that we can add creativity to the mix and so add value to the proposition, says Claire.
So much of what people perceive as being down to Vodafone is, in fact, a result of our activities. The level of trust Vodafone ‘s placed in us is huge. The 10-year contract is unique in the logistics industry and brings the relationship onto a completely different level, she adds.
Such a different level, in fact, that after the deal had been concluded, much head scratching apparently ensued at Vodafone HQ. No-one had ever signed off a single order of this kind before. And it ‘s unlikely such a ground-breaking logistics contract will ever be signed again.