Home: Issue 5 2011 › Network solutions
Network solutions
04/07/2011 | Channel: Logistics / Packaging
Remaining true to its innovative heritage, Palletline's latest technological developments bring new levels of service to the pallet distribution market
Following its launch in 1992, Palletline represented one of the biggest fundamental changes in UK based haulage for decades. Based on an innovative hub and spoke operation, Palletline brings together a network of individual distribution companies from across the UK. Each of these Member Companies combines their resources and capabilities to provide an efficient palletised goods delivery service.
Whilst this revolutionary approach has since prompted the rise of other UK pallet networks, based on a range of different operating models, Palletline’s structure continues to deliver competitive advantages. Each Member Company is a shareholder in the network, which in turn drives the company’s quality ethos throughout the entire system.
As cost scrutiny continues to grow following pressures from the global economic downturn, and changing regulations around issues such as the environment, so the distribution market faces the challenge of meeting these expectations and still realising growth. In response, earlier this year Palletline introduced its new European palletised distribution service, which offers a range of benefits from improved service levels and freight visibility to cost reductions.
Based around the principles of fast, reliable, and efficient distribution, this new service builds on the established expertise of members Europa Worldwide Logistics and C S Ellis (Group) Ltd, combined with the entire Palletline network to link 30 different European with regular scheduled departures both to and from all destinations. Frequencies range from daily to weekly dependant on demand, with deliveries within Europe being completed by an established network of partner companies, whilst Palletline’s UK network handles imported cargo.
“Our strategy has been based upon providing our customers with a single one-stop-shop solution,” explains Kevin Buchanan, managing director of Palletline. “We focus one to three pallet consignments, which may be smaller in volume terms but carry the same customer expectations in terms of quality of service. Often, clients are not aware of the technical differences and difficulties in moving freight across Europe, which is where our advanced network and expertise are of real benefit. We are also been working with our European partners to offer the same high level traceability solution that is currently provided by Palletline within the UK.”
Palletline’s European service includes a selection of high value propositions. Member Company C S Ellis (Group) Ltd provides the gateway to and from the German market, bringing an established history of over ten years of expertise in this area. “We offer a high value option here, having identified a market leading proposition to provide delivery from the UK to anywhere in Germany – and also in reverse - within 48 hours, utilising the Palletline network,” stated Chaz Ellis. Typical products shipped include everything from engineering components to consumer products, and C S Ellis predicts steady year on year growth.
Established European logistics specialists Europa Worldwide Logistics covers continental Europe for Palletline, including the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Austria and Switzerland. “Demand for palletised distribution is definitely on the increase across Europe, with volumes up significantly,” confirmed Gren Turner, managing director - Europe. “The move away from conventional kilo and volume pricing has opened doors even further, and we are budgeting for this sector of our market to grow faster than the economies we serve.”
One of Palletline’s key focuses over the last five years has been reinforcing its position as the market leader for service provision. As part of this, the business has embraced technology - one of the market’s biggest drivers - in order to measure these service levels in a sophisticated way, and drive forward improvements. “In reality, no other pallet network actually knows what their delivery services stats are,” notes Kevin. “The way they measure this is through uploaded proof of delivery (POD) information, which doesn’t allow you to accurately measure the time of delivery, surcharged items, and other aspects.
“In response, four years ago we implemented digital signature capture (DSC) at all of our Member Companies, which enables us to capture data on around 90 per cent of our shipments. This in turn provides a real-time GPS positioning with an anatomic clock stamping the actual time of delivery, so it’s a very transparent system. Having this clarity of data - which other pallet networks simply don’t establish - has enabled us to make improvements to our performance where necessary. On the back of this, we developed an automated service failure system meaning a service failure alert is created automatically in the system if a signature is not on the shipment at its scheduled delivery time.”
Whilst 90 per cent of the company’s shipments are captured in this way, it is inevitable that a small number of deliveries will fall outside these criteria. In order to gather data accurately on these consignments, Palletline has implemented a ‘manual closure’ system, allowing drivers to upload the information normally captured digitally, which is then verified against the paper signature. With nine points of scanning throughout the lifecycle of each individual pallet, Palletline is also able to continually update clients on the status of their deliveries, where necessary.
The benefits of systems such as these are already evident, with Palletline achieving a successfully delivery rate of 99.3 per cent as of Easter 2011, an increase on its 95 per cent rating of the previous year. Building on the success of previous investments, Palletline is looking to bring further technological advances to the distribution market later in the year. “Investment is critical in order for Palletline to maintain its market leading edge over the competition. At present we are in the midst of a multi-million pound project to launch a completely new IT system in October of this year. This will take us five years ahead of our competitors in terms of our core platform. We are also looking at building in an automated estimated time of arrival (ETA) system to complement our track and trace, and DSC services,” explains Kevin.
He continues to describe how this is crucial to the company’s market approach. “We charge our members the lowest hub fees in the sector, which is a deliberate strategy in order to enable profit to be retained at the member end, as opposed to the hub. Not only is this beneficial to our members, it also enables us to continue to invest in our infrastructure, technology and people. This is crucial to retaining our market leading status, otherwise all you are focused on is who can move the pallet for the cheapest price, rather than the overall service package.”
Having broken its own volume record four times earlier in the year, for the most pallets moved in a 14-day period, Palletline’s differentiating approach to the fast-evolving distribution sector is clearly being embraced by the market. Kevin concludes with his commitment to driving this level of service provision even further. “The business has seen growth through greater numbers of Member Companies joining our network. However, going forward I believe that growth will come from having established our undisputed position as market leaders in terms of service provision. Our strategy over the next five years is to position ourselves as the leading pallet network, where clients can have confidence in our reliability and quality of service. We will also continue to look at areas where we need to diversify, such as a night-time delivery services, as is appropriate to provide customers with practical solutions to the challenges they face in getting goods to market.”
Palletline
Services Pallet network
Whilst this revolutionary approach has since prompted the rise of other UK pallet networks, based on a range of different operating models, Palletline’s structure continues to deliver competitive advantages. Each Member Company is a shareholder in the network, which in turn drives the company’s quality ethos throughout the entire system.
As cost scrutiny continues to grow following pressures from the global economic downturn, and changing regulations around issues such as the environment, so the distribution market faces the challenge of meeting these expectations and still realising growth. In response, earlier this year Palletline introduced its new European palletised distribution service, which offers a range of benefits from improved service levels and freight visibility to cost reductions.
Based around the principles of fast, reliable, and efficient distribution, this new service builds on the established expertise of members Europa Worldwide Logistics and C S Ellis (Group) Ltd, combined with the entire Palletline network to link 30 different European with regular scheduled departures both to and from all destinations. Frequencies range from daily to weekly dependant on demand, with deliveries within Europe being completed by an established network of partner companies, whilst Palletline’s UK network handles imported cargo.
“Our strategy has been based upon providing our customers with a single one-stop-shop solution,” explains Kevin Buchanan, managing director of Palletline. “We focus one to three pallet consignments, which may be smaller in volume terms but carry the same customer expectations in terms of quality of service. Often, clients are not aware of the technical differences and difficulties in moving freight across Europe, which is where our advanced network and expertise are of real benefit. We are also been working with our European partners to offer the same high level traceability solution that is currently provided by Palletline within the UK.”
Palletline’s European service includes a selection of high value propositions. Member Company C S Ellis (Group) Ltd provides the gateway to and from the German market, bringing an established history of over ten years of expertise in this area. “We offer a high value option here, having identified a market leading proposition to provide delivery from the UK to anywhere in Germany – and also in reverse - within 48 hours, utilising the Palletline network,” stated Chaz Ellis. Typical products shipped include everything from engineering components to consumer products, and C S Ellis predicts steady year on year growth.
Established European logistics specialists Europa Worldwide Logistics covers continental Europe for Palletline, including the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Austria and Switzerland. “Demand for palletised distribution is definitely on the increase across Europe, with volumes up significantly,” confirmed Gren Turner, managing director - Europe. “The move away from conventional kilo and volume pricing has opened doors even further, and we are budgeting for this sector of our market to grow faster than the economies we serve.”
One of Palletline’s key focuses over the last five years has been reinforcing its position as the market leader for service provision. As part of this, the business has embraced technology - one of the market’s biggest drivers - in order to measure these service levels in a sophisticated way, and drive forward improvements. “In reality, no other pallet network actually knows what their delivery services stats are,” notes Kevin. “The way they measure this is through uploaded proof of delivery (POD) information, which doesn’t allow you to accurately measure the time of delivery, surcharged items, and other aspects.
“In response, four years ago we implemented digital signature capture (DSC) at all of our Member Companies, which enables us to capture data on around 90 per cent of our shipments. This in turn provides a real-time GPS positioning with an anatomic clock stamping the actual time of delivery, so it’s a very transparent system. Having this clarity of data - which other pallet networks simply don’t establish - has enabled us to make improvements to our performance where necessary. On the back of this, we developed an automated service failure system meaning a service failure alert is created automatically in the system if a signature is not on the shipment at its scheduled delivery time.”
Whilst 90 per cent of the company’s shipments are captured in this way, it is inevitable that a small number of deliveries will fall outside these criteria. In order to gather data accurately on these consignments, Palletline has implemented a ‘manual closure’ system, allowing drivers to upload the information normally captured digitally, which is then verified against the paper signature. With nine points of scanning throughout the lifecycle of each individual pallet, Palletline is also able to continually update clients on the status of their deliveries, where necessary.
The benefits of systems such as these are already evident, with Palletline achieving a successfully delivery rate of 99.3 per cent as of Easter 2011, an increase on its 95 per cent rating of the previous year. Building on the success of previous investments, Palletline is looking to bring further technological advances to the distribution market later in the year. “Investment is critical in order for Palletline to maintain its market leading edge over the competition. At present we are in the midst of a multi-million pound project to launch a completely new IT system in October of this year. This will take us five years ahead of our competitors in terms of our core platform. We are also looking at building in an automated estimated time of arrival (ETA) system to complement our track and trace, and DSC services,” explains Kevin.
He continues to describe how this is crucial to the company’s market approach. “We charge our members the lowest hub fees in the sector, which is a deliberate strategy in order to enable profit to be retained at the member end, as opposed to the hub. Not only is this beneficial to our members, it also enables us to continue to invest in our infrastructure, technology and people. This is crucial to retaining our market leading status, otherwise all you are focused on is who can move the pallet for the cheapest price, rather than the overall service package.”
Having broken its own volume record four times earlier in the year, for the most pallets moved in a 14-day period, Palletline’s differentiating approach to the fast-evolving distribution sector is clearly being embraced by the market. Kevin concludes with his commitment to driving this level of service provision even further. “The business has seen growth through greater numbers of Member Companies joining our network. However, going forward I believe that growth will come from having established our undisputed position as market leaders in terms of service provision. Our strategy over the next five years is to position ourselves as the leading pallet network, where clients can have confidence in our reliability and quality of service. We will also continue to look at areas where we need to diversify, such as a night-time delivery services, as is appropriate to provide customers with practical solutions to the challenges they face in getting goods to market.”
Palletline
Services Pallet network