Brewer Molson Coors has launched a supply chain improvement programme following a strategic review and modelling exercise carried out by Davies & Robson.
The modelling covered primary distribution ex-breweries and a national distribution centre, warehouse operations at regional distribution centres, secondary distribution and direct delivery ex the NDC and breweries.
Using six week’s worth of real order data to accurately model each activity, Davies & Robson created daily vehicle routes, using actual road distances to model primary and secondary distribution. Synthetics were then applied to create activity times for order picking, dependent on whether product is picked from stock, batch picked or cross-docked and for activities such as goods receipt, put away and replenishment.
In addition to benchmarking the current primary and secondary distribution operations and identifying costs to serve various geographic markets, the model allowed Molson Coors to establish whether alternative infrastructures would produce significant savings, identify cost saving opportunities and predict future distribution costs based on different sales scenarios.
As a result, Molson Coors is now working with DHL Tradeteam on a number of initiatives under the direction of Victoria Segebarth, Molson Coors’ head of distribution transformation.
She said: “The modelling that Davies and Robson undertook for Molson Coors (UK & Ireland) gave us a strong platform from which to explore various future strategic distribution scenarios. We are continuing to use the output of their work to shape our future distribution network.”
