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Vol 32 - No 06 - September 2006 Branch news : North West - Visit to National Railway Supplies (NRS), Crewe NRS is the UK’s leading railway logistics, material and solutions supplier. They employ around 500 staff at its headquarters in Crewe and are wholly owned by the Unipart Group of Companies, a market leader in European logistics and warehousing. The distribution centre at Crewe stocks and distributes 22,000 products throughout the UK railway supply chain. This site also houses the Service Centres which deal predominantly in the servicing and repair of signalling and telecommunication equipment. NRS use the SAP business system to manage their inventory and Network Rail makes up about 92% of NRS’s customer base. Introduction to NRS & the Unipart Way The first part of the visit focused on a presentation by the Operations Manager on how NRS has adopted the “Unipart Way” and “Six Sigma” techniques to improve their business processes. They describe the “Unipart Way” as a Western version of the Toyota “lean” approach to manufacturing and are using these tools and techniques to continuously improve their processes and products to achieve world class standards of quality, delivery and customer service. NRS uses the “Six Sigma” data-driven approach to remove defects and every department, from the warehouse to the offices, meet on a regular basis to review the DMAIC and DMADV techniques to strive toward continuous improvement and the elimination of waste. Site Tour The tour started at the Service Centres which deal with the receipt and repair of customers’ products. Each centre specialises in a particular product group. Many of the customers’ parts date from the 1900’s. As many of these older components are no longer available to order, the Centres strip down and save all the useable parts to reuse for future repairs. Even the test equipment has to be based on designs dating from the early part of the 20th century. Each area we visited (from the Service Centres through to the Warehouse) have a designated meeting area where the staff gather to review and record the progress they are making using the aforementioned continuous improvement tools. Some of the continuous improvements techniques used were photographs on work station walls showing how the operator’s work bench should look. This is used as a quick visual check by any passing manager to see that everything is laid out to hand (i.e. unused tools all returned to the shadow boards). T Cards were used in the offices as a visual aid for key daily activities and were turned once these had taken place. Visible lights, to be switched on when a shop floor operative needed assistance, were also being deployed to improve efficiencies (similar to the superstore checkout systems). The visit ended at the Warehouse where 9000 components are picked daily. They put away during the first shift and pick & despatch during the second shift. Each stores person is responsible for the housekeeping of a specific area and must fill in a sheet each day to confirm that all is in order and also record any recommendations to further improve the efficiencies. These issues are all covered in their daily meeting. Surprisingly, the warehouse was not laid out so fast moving goods were close to the pick & pack areas! The tour overran by approximately one hour so the questions & answers part of the tour was cut short. This visit was geared up to demonstrate how NRS had used the “Unipart Way” to push forward their business and it was clear that the majority of its staff had fully embraced the techniques and were now seeing the benefits of using these tools. Mike Parr, MIOM Related Topics:
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