HRH Princess Anne presented the prestigious Award for Materials Handling Equipment and Technology to Quinn Radiators at the CILT’s awards evening held at the London Marriott Hotel. Ciarán Doherty, Operations Manager at Quinn Radiators and Andy Blair, Sales Manager at Swisslog, accepted the award at the ceremony held on 23 October 2008.
The CILT Annual Awards for Excellence aim to highlight the achievements of ‘the very best’ in order to encourage the highest standards of excellence in the Transport and Logistics industry.
Says Ciarán Doherty, Operations Manager at Quinn Radiators: “Quinn Radiators are delighted to have received this award in recognition of the innovative and industry leading approach we have adopted to our logistics and storage challenge. The award is also a testament to the excellent partnership developed with Swisslog who have delivered a solution that we believe is second to none and will pay dividends in the years ahead.”
Pieter Feenstra, Managing Director for Swisslog UK said “Swisslog is very proud that our customer Quinn Radiators has received this important CILT award, especially since the main reasons for receiving the award were due to this project increasing Quinn’s customer service levels and reducing their costs significantly. These criteria are always paramount to Swisslog when designing, implementing and maintaining logistics solutions.”
Halved order lead-times
The winning award submission detailed how Swisslog, a global supplier of integrated logistics solutions, helped to create one of the most modern and efficient production and storage sites worldwide for Quinn, the largest manufacturer of domestic and designer radiators in the UK.
Faced with the task of improving the handling of Quinn Radiators’ large and varied product range, Swisslog set about developing automated handling for radiators. Following successful trials with magnetic grippers they were able to incorporate this solution into a fully automated, 40 metre high, storage facility. This has flexible size locations, and can handle 4 production pallet sizes, and pick to any of 80 dispatch pallet sizes.
In operation Quinn have been able to halve order lead-times, achieved almost 100% on time in full, and reduced staff significantly. The resultant savings were more than double that planned and the return on investment was achieved earlier than expected.
Swisslog is a global provider of integrated logistics solutions for warehouses, distribution centres and hospitals. Its comprehensive services portfolio ranges from building complex warehouses and distribution centres to implementing Swisslog’s own software. In addition Swisslog provides intra-company logistics solutions for hospitals as well as software and consulting services in the field of supply chain management.
Swisslog’s solutions optimize customers’ production, logistics and distribution processes in order to increase flexibility, responsiveness and quality of service while minimizing logistics costs. With years of experience in the development and implementation of integrated logistics solutions, Swisslog provides the expertise that customers in more than 50 countries around the world rely on.
Headquartered in Buchs/Aarau, Switzerland, Swisslog currently employs around 2,000 staff in 20 countries worldwide.
Quinn Radiators is a division of the Quinn Group. The Quinn Group, which has operations in the UK in the areas of commercial and business insurance, glass, plastics and hotels, employs approximately 7,000 people in Ireland, the UK and Europe. Being part of the Quinn Group enables Quinn Radiators to leverage market knowledge from other Quinn Group companies quickly, allowing it to respond rapidly to market conditions and trends. It is seen as one of the most enduring success stories in Irish business and in 2007, the Quinn Group reported sales in excess of £2 billion. Quinn Radiators’ range is available through a nationwide network of merchants.
For further information, please visit www.quinnradiators.co.uk.
Swisslog UK Ltd
Emma Rawlinson
Marketing Executive
Tel: 01527 55 1600
Email: emma.rawlinson@swisslog.com
www.swisslog.com
Comments are closed.