Kuehne+Nagel takes on temp solutions

When one of the Kuehne+Nagel's clients at its Heywood, Manchester site needed access to additional onsite storage to meet predicted peaks in supply and demand throughout the year, Kuehne+Nagel approached Spaciotempo with a brief to provide a cost effective alternative to third party warehouse rental.

Previously, the business was renting additional warehouse space from third party suppliers in order to fulfil storage requirements from customers when its own facilities were operating at full capacity. While providing a quick solution, holding stock across multiple disparate sites meant that time was wasted negotiating the movement of goods between multiple warehouses, as a result fulfilment times to customers were increased.

This also caused inaccuracies in the data logging process. Previously when stock was moved between separate sites, identification codes for each load were inputted into a central system at each location. Not only was this a laborious process, but the risk of receiving discrepancies of data due to user error was high.

Since increasing its onsite storage capacity with a temporary structure, Kuehne+Nagel has been able to streamline its data logging processes and reduce fulfilment times. Now when stock arrives on site, it is inputted into the system only once, improving the accuracy of stock records and making load planning simpler.

Mark Handel, contracts manager at Kuehne+Nagel  explains: “For all of our clients, it is important that they can have immediate access to their goods, something which was a priority for our merchandise client who at any one time could have upwards of 4,000 products stored at our site in Heywood. This is something we couldn’t always provide, due to having to move goods between sites.

“Since installing the new onsite storage facility we have been able to ensure that we have instant access to our client’s goods, significantly reducing stock fulfilment times, and improving the service we can offer to our clients.”

The temporary solution is a 30 x 50 metre, free standing storage facility, with a wall height of 3.5 metres. It provides optimal storage for Kuehne+Nagel, and utilises block stacking of pallets, meaning that Kuehne+Nagel can take advantage of further storage for up to 3,000 pallets.

Installed in 15 days, the temporary building has an aluminium frame, incorporating single skin steel cladding on the wall panels, while the inside vicinity is accessible by forklift truck.

Mark Handel explains why the company is such an advocate of temporary structures to help its customers plan for demand peaks. He says: “Our clients require very responsive warehousing and logistics solutions. Operating across a number of sectors means we understand the way that supply and demand fluctuations can impact our customers.

“One of the businesses benefitting from this particular building works within the consumer merchandising sector and regularly operates at peak capacity for around six months of the year. This increase in supply and demand has meant that they soon outgrew the storage capacity of our main building, requiring immediate additional storage to ensure they could continue to meet increased demand; this meant that the possibility of building a permanent onsite building wasn’t feasible. A temporary solution gives us a cost effective option that we can have installed and removed as required.”

Retractable tunnels

Spaciotempo also installed a temporary building, with retractable tunnels, at Kuehne+Nagel’s Foston site. A spike in business after winning a significant contract, saw the site reach its maximum storage capacity. As a result, Spaciotempo installed four temporary buildings, all of which are connected using retractable tunnels. The temporary structures further link across to the company’s permanent building at Foston and provide a flush finish, utilising racking as opposed to block pallet storage in order to maximise available storage capacity.

Mark Handel concludes: “As a business serving customers from a diverse range of sectors and industries we consistently need to ensure that we are completely reactive to their needs. If this means that they require additional storage fast, then we need to have the processes in place to accommodate these requests. As a business, this means we need to find suitable storage which can be installed quickly, and is also cost effective, factors which are met when looking at the installation of temporary buildings.”