SDI has over 30 years experience providing innovative solutions for leading brands in retail, wholesale, fulfilment and e-commerce. Gordon Smith is CEO of SDI Group and he spoke to Warehouse & Logistics News.
WLN – As the Integrated Materials Handling category experts, how has the category been performing in the last 12 months? What are the major trends and developments?
It has been a really busy year and, in particular, we are seeing a growing globalisation of our offering. We are working all over the world – with a depth of proven solutions coming from our factories in Europe. Interestingly, there is growing demand for automated handling solutions from South America and the United States.
But it is E-commerce that is spearheading the drive for automation. Generally, there is a trend towards increasing productivity within the four walls of the warehouse, as concern rises over the ever-spiraling costs and availability of labour. I believe you will be seeing a far greater take-up of automation to counter this.
WLN – What are your core products and services: what are you best known for providing?
SDI Group is best known for its technical expertise in developing and installing innovative high-speed sortation solutions for the world of fast-fashion retailing. We have a large range of hanging garment systems and flat goods sorters suitable for just about any retail distribution application. We pride ourselves in our ability to develop solutions quickly in response to demanding customer applications.
One of our fastest areas of development is our Maintenance Service and Support operation, where we deploy on-site engineers and fast-response teams to guarantee maximum uptime for client’s sites. We recently won a three-year contract to maintain all three of George at Asda’s UK automated distribution centres.
WLN – What developments or upgrades have you made to your core products and services in the last 12 months?
Our latest development is the newly launched MonaLisa hanging pouch dynamic buffering and sortation system that allows flat pack and hanging goods to be transported together. This is proving to be highly popular with some of the world’s largest fashion retailers – in particular, for handling returns, as it enables returned items to be buffered and called off for the next order quickly. It cuts out the lengthy process of taking ‘returns’ back to the shelf and re-picking again later.
Another innovative sortation technology we introduced recently is a ‘world first’ – the automated Empty Hanger Sorter. We deployed ground-breaking camera technology to identify hangers from over 80 different profiles in under 300 milliseconds whilst going through a high speed sortation process. The automated system revolutionises the labour-intensive operation of sorting empty hangers returned from retail stores. We are very excited by the number of enquiries we’ve had for this technology – in fact, we have just upgraded the system with an automated input process that boosts productivity significantly.
Then there is our range of flat goods sorters. The LS900 is our mid-range carton tilt tray sorter for both packages and cartons. Re-applying a lot of our existing technology, it has been received favourably by a number of the smaller parcel operators who see it as a sorter that can cope with a wide range of products and at the same time get a good return on investment compared with some of the higher volume tilt tray and cross belt sorters on the market.
The TTU (Tight-Turn Unit) has had a complete redesign enabling it to be easily maintained with no drive chain to cause friction. The PTU (Push Tray Unit) was developed as a sortation solution for fragile products and lower speeds that can be applied where customers wish to pack off a packaged product inside a carton or a box.
WLN – What makes you the ‘go to’ supplier in your area of expertise?
Generally, it’s our flexibility and depth of knowledge in a very specialised market. We know what works for the customer base that we work for. Our flexibility is important too – we understand that a high street or e-commerce fashion retailer is working to very demanding time scales and a very fast moving market, and we have to move in exactly the same way to be attractive to them.
WLN – Have you launched any new products and services in the past year? How are they performing?
As mentioned earlier, we have launched the MonaLisa hanging bag sorter, which is presently being installed in two locations in Europe – one in the UK. And we have plenty of potential contracts for the MonaLisa coming down the pipeline. This technology is revolutionising e-commerce fulfilment and completely turning the business of managing returns on its head.
The Empty Hanger Sorter – also mentioned earlier – is another interesting development that is really taking off, with further upgrades and further orders from retail clients. As a ‘world first’ it has huge potential across global markets.
One further area experiencing strong growth is our Maintenance Service & Support operations. We have invested heavily in new facilities in Hinckley and expanded our maintenance engineering team significantly to support the demand for maintenance contracts. And we don’t just support our own systems, we maintain equipment supplied by others too.
WLN – Which industry sectors are your customers in?
Mainly apparel and retail, although we are starting to look at the application of our technology in the automotive sector where our MonaLisa product, in particular, can offer some unique advantages and significant process improvements.
WLN – Can you name some of your major customers and tell us about the work you do for them?
We recently completed a multi-million contract with George at Asda to expand capacity at their Brackmills regional distribution centre in Northampton.
It was part of an on-going series of projects for George at Asda. SDI Group maximised the cube of the RDC by installing a four-level mezzanine structure, increasing ‘Garment-on-Hangers’ capacity, provided an SDI LS900 carton sortation system and equipped a new packing operation with conveyors and benches.
WLN – Can you tell us about your latest major projects, and what they involve?
SDI Group is currently installing capacity-increasing garment handling systems in two significant projects for Matalan – one of the UK’s leading clothing and homeware retailers.
At Matalan’s new 575,000 square feet Galaxy Distribution Centre, in Knowsley, Merseyside, we are installing a T500 trolley system. Meanwhile, at an existing 320,000 square feet Matalan DC in Corby, Northants, a ‘4-inch trolley’ Goods on Hanger (GoH) system is being installed as part of a project to increase capacity from 1 million to 7 million units of storage.
These are just a couple of examples. We have an ongoing programme of major projects underway in Europe and worldwide.
WLN – Have you made any big moves recently in terms of investment in the business, recruitment and so on?
This year have increased staff substantially, by about 20%, bringing our numbers up globally to around 260 employees. We have also expanded our European facilities, with a new R&D centre and larger offices in Germany, and have opened a new office in northern Germany, in Hamburg. In the UK we have moved to a new site in Hinckley, which gives us extra manufacturing capacity, a demonstration area for new developments, such as the MonaLisa and more office space for our Maintenance & Support operation. So we have invested quite a significant amount in people and new infrastructure this year. However, we are also looking at new markets.
WLN – What was your company’s single biggest achievement in the last year?
In terms of products, it would be the launch of the MonaLisa in the period of time we did, taking it from concept to completion within 18 months – and we are currently commissioning the first two projects. It was a very aggressive time scale, and we’re very proud of our achievement.
WLN – What are your plans for 2015? Are you planning to bring out any more products or services, move into new markets or enter new countries?
Basically, it’s going to be more of the same. We are seeing very healthy pipelines and a continuation of the work we are doing in supporting a number of our existing customers with their expansion in Europe. We have a couple of new products we hope to unveil in the second quarter of 2015 – so something to watch out for.
WLN – Are you exhibiting at any major trade shows this year?
We are indeed intending to get to quite a number of shows. We will be exhibiting at the following exhibitions: Logistics (5-6 November, Madrid, Spain), Manutention (17-20 November, Paris, France), LogiMat (10-12 February 2015, Germany), IRX (25-26 March 2015, UK), Intralogistics (31 March – 2 April 2015, Paris, France) and IntraLogistics Italia (19-23 May 2015, Milan, Italy).
WLN – What are your predictions for the industry in 2015?
Continuing growth, subject to any sharp economic disasters in Europe. But we are seeing as busy a pipeline of future projects as we have ever seen in the last 20 years.
WLN – What other headline news from your company can our readers look forward to reading about in Warehouse & Logistics News in 2015?
Hopefully, plenty of new contract win stories and, I expect, a few new innovative product launches. We never stop!
Phone: 01763 244299
Email: info.uk@sdigroup.com
Web: www.sdigroup.com
Twitter: @SDIGroupLtd
Facebook: SDIGroupUK
LinkedIn: sdi-group-ltd
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