Furniture manufacturer turns to Briggs Equipment

Senator decided to remain with Briggs Equipment when its materials handling contract was put out to tender last year.

Senator quality and purchasing manager Gwynne Harries explains: "Our tender process gave us the opportunity to assess what we already had, what we needed and how our processes could be improved.

"Although we had several very high quality submissions, Briggs Equipment had a really strong understanding of our business and was very flexible in the solutions they suggested. This was particularly important in the current economic climate. It is also vital to our plans for the future.

"Although recent growth has put more demands on our fleet, the number of trucks we need has actually been reduced slightly thanks to the reliability and flexibility of the Yale equipment.

Senator’s largest production and warehouse facility in Altham is central to further growth plans. Up to 50 lorries arrive on site daily for the unloading of raw materials and distributing finished products.

Once raw materials are unloaded they are moved safely and directly to the manufacturing area to be transformed into desks, cupboards, drawers and other office furniture before distribution to dealers, major office developments and public sector organisations.

Counterbalance trucks and pedestrian pallet trucks have an obvious role to play and Yale VNA equipment helps the company make maximum use of valuable warehouse space.

Briggs Equipment has a team of 600 multi-skilled mobile engineers to provide around-the-clock cover for customers.

Senator also installed Speedshield, a telemetry system, across the fleet.

Speedshield has a proven track record in influencing attitudes of operators by enforcing pre-shift health and safety checks. It is more sophisticated than similar systems in using randomly alternated questions to prevent checks becoming a ‘tick box’ exercise and, at the same time, generating a paperless compliance trail.

It is a component that Gwynne has found to be of great value. He added: "Initially Speedshield was installed on a trial basis but it soon proved its worth. The system is now being installed across the fleet.

"It’s part of a comprehensive solution for our business that’s developed from a genuine partnership between ourselves, Briggs Equipment and Yale. 

"Load sensing further improves productivity and real time data produces vital management information for pro-active decision making and account management.

"As a result we are running a very efficient operation, something that’s vital in a high turnover, low margin industry such as ours.”