Case Irish Distillers & Pernod Ricard

Customer challenge

To what extent can we increase the maximum output of our factory and associated warehouse, with safety as the top priority, and what high-level programs need to be rolled out to achieve this?

The customer faced the challenge of a WMS (Warehouse Management System) implementation to separate ERP and warehouse activities, but had no insight into the long-term effects on warehouse and production processes, given the significant annual growth. An additional bottling plant was even one of the future options. In order to determine the roadmap for the next ten years, UC Group was asked to provide advice on production and logistics processes, safety measures and business cases.

Services provided by UC Group:

• Strategic advice
• Data analysis
• Change Management & Team Alignment
• IT Project/Implementation Management
• Analysis & advice about on-site safety and transport flows
• Advice on planning and forecasting for production and warehouse processes
• Setting up a line change over matrix
• Development of a capacity model per process activity

At every step of the process, the IDL team is engaged and challenged to take the next steps so that the local team fully supported the selected solution. This was achieved through (off-site) workshops, shop floor visits and thorough data analysis.

Results

• Implementation plan including ten-year planning & investments
• No additional bottling plant required to achieve growth rates (savings on investments of more than €20 million)
• Focus on improving and expanding the existing location within the organization
• Significant cost savings on operational logistics costs (over 15%) and performance improvement (factory output will increase by a factor of 2.5)

Our solution

UC Group has developed a strategic roadmap to increase on-site safety while enabling significant capacity growth over the next ten years. This included high-level timelines and investment budgets. This first phase of the project was carried out in an intensive 12-week program with biweekly workshops with customer representatives and UC Group consultants.

After the delivery of the strategic roadmap and the future design of the end-of-line production and warehouse layout, the rollout of the plan was carried out by a joint project team between Irish Distillers and UC Group. UC Group took on the following roles, among others:

• IT project management for MES (Manufacturing Execution System) implementation
• Data analysis of volume growth (annually) to validate plans against current reality
• Support in requesting quotes (RFQ) for selecting a mechanization supplier
• Validation of the selected solution for implementation based on the strategic roadmap philosophy
• Analysis & advice on the safety and flows of yard truck movements
• Analysis of storage requirements for further growth based on volume growth