Paul Hill speaks to the man who oversaw Filshill’s huge move into a new headquarters
PH: Can you provide an overview of the recent warehouse project and how it went overall, including the changeover?
AA: The business never missed any deliveries during the transition, which was crucial for us and our customers. Despite frustrating delays and a few teething problems, as you would have with any major new build, the move itself was actually very smooth.
Why Westway Park? The location of the site was attractive as it was geographically close to our existing site at Hillington and was a reclaimed brownfield site, which aligned with our sustainability values.
Moving to Westway has been a very positive move for the business. The premises provide us with our 120,400sq ft, purpose-built headquarters and warehouse. Our previous 93,500sqft site at nearby Hillington served us well, but we required a much bigger and more efficient space to meet our aspirations for future growth.
What were the primary reasons behind the decision to expand?
We had reached and largely exceeded the capacity of our Hillington depot, which meant we had been forced to use a stockholding warehouse for stock. That was increasing the time it took to get stock on shelf for picking customer orders. The warehouse floor was also becoming increasingly congested with FLT. In addition, there were bottlenecks at the goods in/goods out areas.
Our yard area had also reduced in size due to development at the adjacent site and staff car-parking capacity was limited, particularly at certain times of the day. Areas for meetings were also limited.
How has the expansion impacted your overall operations and capacity?
Storage capacity has increased from about 900,000 cases per month at Hillington to an optimum capacity of two million cases per month at Westway. By balancing the product spread across the various storage areas and introducing a one-way picking system, we have been able to halve the reach trucks required to stock the warehouse.
The dock doors have allowed us to concentrate work streams into defined time periods and we still have capacity to grow without having to re-evaluate current operational methods. The docks have allowed us to drop from a three-person load per vehicle to a one-person load. This equates to over 30% loading efficiency and removes specialist equipment from the process.
What specific challenges did you encounter during the expansion process, and how were they addressed?
Obviously, the pandemic and the post-Covid-19 fallout presented issues, although there had been previous delays to the project. At one point, the groundworks appeared to stop, even though the weather was unusually favourable for Renfrewshire – and it wasn’t until later that we discovered the site manager had won the National Lottery and left. Although it was a relatively short period before a replacement site manager was in place, many of the sub-contractors had other commitments and our soon-to-be landlord had missed their slot.
This posed various issues for the business as we had effectively reached capacity in our previous premises and had to turn down new business as we would struggle to provide the level of service we wanted. From a build and transition planning perspective, post-lockdown there were labour and material shortages across the construction sector.
However, we struck agreements to gain early access to certain parts of the building, which allowed us to shorten the total fitout project time and keep momentum going. We were in constant touch with contractors – communication was critical and we held back on customer communications until the last possible moment to avoid sending out confusing information.
Did you implement any new technologies or systems as part of the expansion? If so, what are they and how do they enhance your operations?
I had designed a piece of software to enable us to go live without encountering issues I know other businesses have experienced. As far as I am aware, our ‘Location Flip’ programme is one of a kind – allowing the full set-up and stocking of the Westway site without impacting on the day-to-day business and is completely transparent to our customers.
It also allowed us to treat the new site as an operational stock warehouse so suppliers could set up the new site on their systems. This made stock purchase ordering seamless with our commercial department able to raise orders for Westway. We also conducted a complete server and infrastructure refresh, introducing Wi-Fi across the entire site, and increased our data connection capacity.
We introduced a semi-automated shuttle and multi-floor system in our warehouse solution. One of the site selection criteria was that we wanted to bring all the stock under one roof to increase cost efficiencies, save time and bolster customer service levels. We have raised the lowest shelf level on adjustable pallet racking (APR) for safe and easy picking underneath, and there’s a one-way traffic system in the APR area to control forklift truck movement. We have also created a custom-built click & collect lounge.
How has the expansion influenced your workforce, both in terms of hiring and training?
One of the driving factors of location selection was to keep it local to Hillington. Early in the relocation project, our chief executive, Simon Hannah, stated that retaining our current staff was far more important than the potential for the reduced cost per square metre that was on offer in other areas.
We bolstered our on-floor staffing for the move, implementing the new operating model and allowing the company to focus of scaling up. Use of agency staff has reduced dramatically, while retention of staff transitioning from temporary to permanent is at an all-time high.
Looking ahead, do you anticipate any further expansions or modifications to the warehouse in the near future? If so, what factors will drive those decisions?
From my perspective, yes – the building should satisfy the needs of the business for several years, but how we operate at the site will constantly evolve, embracing technological advancements/redesigning our processes or even using the current flexible staging area to extend our racking solution.
We are a company that is looking to grow and the warehouse near Glasgow Airport will adapt to support that growth.
