Avery Weigh-Tronix is one of the world’s largest manufacturers and suppliers of industrial weighing solutions and service. Many of our solutions have been designed to solve common challenges within the warehouse and logistics industry, including reducing processing time, increasing employee efficiency, minimizing errors and streamlining accounting procedures.
Paul Hines, Innovation Director at Avery Weigh-Tronix spoke to Warehouse & Logistics News
What are your best-known products/ solutions/services?
Avery Weigh-Tronix are best known for weighbridges, but within logistics we are better known for manufacturing and supplying axle weighers, platform scales and counting scales. We’re also well recognised for our service offering, which supports weighing equipment across a variety of manufacturers.
Which industry sectors are you in and which are growing fastest?
We are in most industry sectors, purely through the fact that most industries need to weigh at some point within their process. Within the warehousing industry we’re seeing a lot of investment in picking and packing operations. We’re also seeing growth across the shipping and freight industries in businesses that are looking to get a tighter control on consignments that are being moved.
What are your most recent product innovations?
We recently launched a Mobile Picking Solution which brings weighing technology to the point of pick. This increases pick accuracy and can save businesses thousands of pounds in product giveaway and quality check costs. We developed this after 18 months of in-depth research into the challenges within warehouse and logistics.
What are the major trends affecting your category and your customers?
A major trend we’ve found across our customers is that IT tends to be a major bottleneck. We’re getting around this by developing different ways to make a solution fit a business within its IT constraints, by building in configurable options for flexible integrations.
Can you tell us about any recent customer contracts and how you helped the customer meet their challenges?
We recently helped boiler manufacturer, Vaillant, reduce their warehouse inventory count speeds by 50% and achieve 99.75% pick accuracy with our Mobile Picking Solution.
How does business in 2019 compare to previous years? What’s your strategy for succeeding in the current climate?
The major difference this year is the Brexit ‘cloud’, a lot of industries have an air of uncertainty around them which is presenting itself in different forms, such as limits on capex spend or recruitment. What we’re doing to combat this is to ensure all our engagement with customers has a very clear value proposition, is differentiated, and addresses the requirements the customer has for the outlay of expenditure needed.
What’s the latest from your company?
As a representative board member of the United Kingdom Weighing Federation, we’ve recently been involved in Brexit consultations with the Government, advising on how equipment that falls under Weights and Measures legislation will be impacted after the UK leaves the EU.
Can you tell us about any areas where you’re making technical advances?
Last year we introduced Trace Waste – a product specifically focussed on reducing waste. It allows organisations to measure and record different categories of waste and then act upon the data to reduce their waste levels. Not only is this helping companies towards corporate social responsibly, it can also contribute towards gaining ISO:14001 accreditation.
Are you investing in staff training and skills development?
Our employees have access to a wide range of training and development through our parent company ITW. We also boast the best technical weighing training centre in the UK, which provides our engineers with the skills they need to deliver service excellence.
Are you taking part in any major trade shows? Can you tell us what you’ll be exhibiting there?
Our focus this year is around attending specialised networking events. These events enable us to develop a more intimate relationship with our customers than we could at trade shows.
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