Supply chainOur award-winning supply chain offers a truly competitive edge to our business

Our supply chain provides a superior service to our customers and suppliers.

We are into the fourth year of a five-year programme to build a world class supply chain and we've already introduced a completely new approach to global supply chain planning and logistics.

This incorporates the implementation of changes and improvements to nearly all of our systems and processes, including: 

• Moving from a local country approach to a new regional and ultimately global supply chain structure
• Increasing network optimisation and efficiency
• Improving engagement and forecast sharing with key suppliers

As a result, we have increased the introduction of new products from 5,000 per year in 2008 to 5,000 per month in the financial year ended 31 March 2012 with only a 10% increase in staff.

We have also reduced total supply chain costs and have seen a marked increase in customer satisfaction as shown by our increased TRI*M customer satisfaction scores, which are now close to being in the top 10% of all supply chains across Europe.

In addition we have made considerable savings through the specialisation of our 17 distribution centres across the world and the re-tendering of our freight partners.

As a result of this new approach, we won two prestigious supply chain awards in 2011: 'Operational Excellence' at the Supply Chain Distinction Awards and 'Logistics and Distribution Operations' at the European Supply Chain Excellence Awards.