Mayflex engaged Supply Chain Network to conduct a strategic review of their business evolution with a focus on their warehouse business operations. The existing Mayflex warehouse solution was fragmented and consisted of limited pallet capacity in wide aisle racking, significant stock in outside storage locations, and shunting raw materials and finished cabinets for despatch between their two existing facilities, Environ House (cabinet assembly facility) and Excel House (main warehouse).

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Mayflex operations required re-alignment to meet industry best practices, including layout design, operational processes, and execution systems (WMS). Critical space constraints also needed to be revised in line with future business growth. Mayflex sought a single facility future-proof design that could improve current operating practices and systems, reduce overall costs, and increase performance efficiency.

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Mayflex knew a move to a new warehouse was out of scope in the short/medium term. Supply Chain Network, therefore, provided future proof designs for the new Mayflex buildings knowing these would prove critical to Mayflex positioning itself for forthcoming growth and establishing improved operating practices.

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Under the project scope, the Supply Chain Network team assessed Mayflex’s warehouse footprint, and storage and throughput capabilities, alongside their optimal use of manual, automation, and technology investments. A structured review of all Mayflex’s operations ensured that wherever possible industry best practice could be adopted. To ensure that the operation remained cost-effective as it evolved, the Supply Chain Network team implemented a culture of continual improvement. This also guaranteed Mayflex could continue to provide a commercially competitive service to its customers throughout the re-design.

 

"I found during the delivery of the project that Ian possesses a very deep & broad domain experience in warehouse business operations across multiple business sectors, regions, and business models. His background and approach are built upon years of experience, know-how & knowledge of operational best practice, with a capability to propose innovative, business unique, applicable outcomes, and not one size fits all!"

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Andy Cooper, Chief Operating Officer - Mayflex

 

Suggesting both options of either a phased build or a single fit-out, Supply Chain Network ensured Mayflex’s new facility had the capacity to both maintain the current pallet storage levels, as well as increase it fivefold, to allow for all component parts and flat pack cabinets to be stored and processed in a single facility with capacity for higher than forecasted growth.

Advocating significant efficiency gains in picking productivity, Supply Chain Network suggested introducing a Swisslog Autostore – with the capacity to store around 25,000 toted products across all storage types - to improve inventory rationalisation and leaner stockholding disciplines whilst potentially extending the current site capacity to 8 years and increasing the lifespan to 9.

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Supply Chain Network proposed to greatly increase Mayflex’s new production facility’s pallet storage capacity by introducing a combination of different storage types to collectively facilitate the production processes from end to end. Utilising separate growth assumptions for UK and Export, Supply Chain Network created a high-level forecast model to predict Mayflex’s volume growth across 5 years.

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Introducing gravity racking provided Mayflex with bulk storage of up to 72 different SKU lines of assembled cabinets with scope for this to be extended by an additional 42 lines. Supply Chain Network ensured Mayflex could extend the capacity life of their gravity rack by either increasing the size of the rack, adding to it later, or utilising additional capacity in narrow aisle pallet bulk storage.

 

“Following the site re-design, our business now has a strategy to deliver growth in the current warehouse beyond 2030.”

Andy Cooper, Chief Operating Officer - Mayflex

 

Conducting a thorough evaluation of their storage capacity growth with detailed volumetric analysis, Supply Chain Network greatly increased Mayflex’s storage capacity through a combination of storage types, including tote mini-load systems, pallet shuttles and a mixture of narrow aisle, wide aisle, and in-aisle cable storage & cutting. Supply Chain Network aligned a solid development and deployment proposal to provide Mayflex with the foundations for business improvement opportunities with an optimal warehouse footprint and layout material flow.

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The final delivery of the project provided Mayflex with the design and fit out of a new Environ Warehouse for their cabinets, whilst keeping their supplies in Excel house, and extending their facility’s lifecycle to 2030 and beyond.

The support and engagement from the Supply Chain Network team has accelerated the transformation of Mayflex’s warehouse operations, with the developed solution allowing Mayflex to subsequently overlay technology developments such as WMS solutions to further enhance their warehouse teams’ operational capability and efficiency.