ASSA ABLOY Entrance Systems is home to world-renowned brands Crawford (industrial doors and docking systems), Albany (high-performance high speed doors), Besam (automatic pedestrian doors) and Megadoor (hangar doors). The company has direct sales offices in over 50 countries and factories globally. Specialising in logistics and warehousing projects, they are the largest supplier of industrial doors and loading bay solutions to UK industry. Dedicated teams cover all aspects of design, manufacture, installation and maintenance for every type of working and high-speed entrance, across the UK & Ireland. Industrial projects for British sites are co-ordinated by dedicated teams based in Sheffield, whilst Irish operations are managed from the regional office in Dublin.
WLN – As a top Doors & Curtains supplier, what have conditions been like in the past year for your business?
2016 has been a good year for our industrial operations, with noticeable growth in the order book for all industrial and high-performance high speed doors, compared against 2015. Sales of industrial doors peaked in the second quarter, but the predicted slump in the immediate aftermath of the referendum never materialized. We’ve worked on hundreds of projects, of different sizes and scopes. Sustainability at the loading bay remains high on the agenda for our corporate customers, which is good news for us, allowing us to draw on our strengths as a manufacturer to collaborate effectively with users, designers, developers and consultants. The target of reducing the amount of time a door is physically open ties in directly to carbon footprint – something we’re uniquely able to help with.
WLN – How have recent international developments affected you and how have you responded?
Clearly these are uncertain political and economic times in the UK. As a multinational organization, with elements of our supply chain situated throughout continental Europe, the result of the referendum and consequent fluctuation in sterling value creates a challenge for us to overcome in the short term. It’s important for an organisation like ASSA ABLOY to be able to adapt quickly to change. As you would expect, we planned for all possible outcomes of the referendum with our global management team, so we have minimised the impact on our customers and company. Value of sterling aside, which is a challenge for any multinational company, it is business as usual for our sales, installation and maintenance operations.
WLN – What are your flagship products and services?
Crawford industrial doors are worldrenowned for quality and have been a feature of the UK loading bay since the 1960’s. The insulated overhead sectional industrial door retains its position as the UK’s best-selling system for level-access and raised dock entrances, and our Crawford OH1042P is probably the most efficient model on the market. Crawford dock levellers offer a host of high-quality swing-lip and telescopic models which are widely used in practically every market sector. Our nationwide maintenance service is truly national, with our own Company employed door service engineer network being the largest in Great Britain. Our technicians are highly-trained, competent and well placed throughout the UK & Ireland to allow us to respond quickly to our customer’s support requirements. Our dedicated team of Regional Account Managers across the UK act as our customers’ champion inside our organisation to ensure we deliver on our promises consistently.
WLN – What makes you the ‘go to’ supplier in your category?
We do everything directly, so our standards are consistent. Our product portfolio is unrivalled and, because we manufacture directly we can truly act as a solutions provider. We provide expert support at every stage of design and build right through to after-sales maintenance services. We’re easy to do business with, whether faceto- face or digitally, providing on-site assistance as required. Additionally, all our site operations are managed through a single point of contact, with project management keeping customers informed. Once installed our doors form part of many customer critical operations and our support network across the UK means we can minimise any downtime for them. We are really in the business of saving our customers money by ensuring that whatever the circumstances, we ensure continuity of operations by fast response and delivering first time fix levels which set the standard for the industry.
WLN – How do you help customers improve their business performance?
By listening to the needs of each customer individually. We see that unique internal logistics operations need tailored doors and loading bays. As an OEM, we are able to work to a specific brief, calling on the huge range of loading bay systems, high speed doors and industrial doors we manufacture, ensuring they fit the business seamlessly. By customising our designs we deliver internal and external doors of all speeds, sizes and insulation values to exceed expectations when it comes to safety, security, aesthetics and sustainability performance.
WLN – How have you changed your offering to customers in the last 12 months and why? Have you added anything new?
During 2016, we’ve integrated the Albany range of high-performance high speed doors into our portfolio, which includes fabric curtain and insulated lathe systems for internal and external openings. Albany specialize in rigid and soft bottom beam high speed doors, with specialist models for cleanrooms, food-processing and machine protection applications.
We’ve also added more than 80 BIM (information rich, digital, 3D) models for our core products to our website. Architects, cost consultants and facilities managers utilise the data to assist in building design and project management.
WLN – Have you made any enhancements to your customer service?
In 2016 we became a member of the ‘Institute of Customer Service’ with a view to ensuring our processes and people deliver genuinely first-class service levels across our company. We listened to our customers and added more free to download product information to our website, making product selection easier online. We also adapted how we respond to online enquiries to provide a more responsive service. Perhaps most importantly of all, to ensure we’re constantly improving, we now start our monthly Senior Management Team Meeting by hearing direct customer feedback from the previous month. In line with our learning we expanded our Regional Account Management teams, to ensure our customers have direct and dedicated access to someone who owns their queries and resolves issues quickly.
WLN – Which markets are your customers in? Which ones are growing fastest?
We have customers of all sizes in practically every market sector. Our major projects team, who specialize in the delivery of regional/national distribution centre projects have been busy. We’ve also seen an up-surge in the volume of enquiries from manufacturers looking to modernize their facilities. Some of our most interesting projects are those where end-users moving into ‘Design and Build’ warehouses are looking for specific performance and retro-fitting door systems and modernization kits to make their operational workflows easier or more responsive.
WLN – Can you name some of your major customers and tell us what do you do for them?
Too many to mention, but in the logistics industry we have great experience with major parcel distribution companies expanding to cope with the rise in e-commerce. We’ve delivered solutions for retailers of all descriptions and temperature controlled food distribution chains, supporting projects from one door to several hundred. We collaborate with customers on the dock and floorplan design (new facilities), refurbishment and upgrade solutions (existing sites) and maintenance requirements. We base recommendations on current and expected future needs of each business.
WLN – What’s been your most memorable recent project?
In terms of the size, we completed a 172 bay distribution centre for a national parcel carrier during 2016, installing doors, dock levellers and shelters accordingly. From a maintenance perspective, our team delivered PPM inspections for a wide range of industrial units whilst ‘Scottish Island Hopping’ which they won’t forget in a while, we expect!
WLN – What were your other major achievements in the last 12 months?
Our Crawford OH1042P is certified ‘Secured by Design’ and remains the outstanding industrial door in the category. For the fourth consecutive year, ASSA ABLOY were listed in the ‘100 most innovative companies in the world’ by Forbes, which demonstrates exactly what we are about as a business – responding to changing customer needs by innovating. We also received the RoSPA Silver award for our commitment to a safe working culture across our organization – something we’re committed to and are rightly proud to champion. To further underline our commitment to safe working we also hope to secure the OHSAS18001 accreditation by the end of 2016.
WLN – Are you branching into any new areas, targeting new customers and taking on more people?
We’re already working in almost every sector, but Albany machine protection doors will help us to offer an even stronger solution to precision engineering companies. Cleanroom doors will help us expand in the ‘controlled environments’ sector also.
WLN – How important is staff development and training to your growth?
We’re unequivocal here – colleague development is vital to our company. At our dedicated ‘Training and Excellence Centre’, in Rotherham, our maintenance engineers and installation teams participate in technical and health and safety training programmes throughout the year. We are proud that we re-invest back into the community on many levels – at the moment we have 4 apprentices and next year we plan to increase this further.
WLN – Looking ahead, what factors do you see affecting your business? How are you turning these into opportunities?
As 2016 has proven, we need to be ready for anything. We’ll continue to plan for all eventualities and respond to market movements. One thing we’re sure of is that customers will continue to look for quality.We’ll keep innovating to ensure our products and services make life easier for those reliant upon them.
WLN – What headline news from ASSA ABLOY Entrance Systems can our readers look forward to seeing in Warehouse & Logistics News in 2017?
We have some exciting industrial door product developments in the pipeline, which will offer customers specific performance which isn’t available anywhere else. We’re also looking forward to completing smaller projects for end-users – we love to hear the stories “behind the door” – the most interesting headlines come from the operations our doors support.
WLN – And finally, in our social media age, if you had to sum up your company in a 140-character tweet what would you say?
Your trusted partner for all #industrialdoors #loadingbays #highspeeddoors & #automaticdoors: from new systems to maintenance and repair.
ASSA ABLOY
0333 006 3443
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