Case Study - Switzerland

"Finding a niche service - the Swiss Market"



Introduction

In September 2003 the directors decided to seek a niche service to differentiate the company from its competitors and selected the Swiss market. The project was to upgrade the existing weekly service to daily operation and was driven by a known requirement of existing customers to provide an express road facility to avoid the high costs of airfreight and express vans.

The lead time for the project was set at 6 months.

The operational budget was to achieve a depot-depot time in both directions of 18hrs utilising 13.6 metre tilt trailers. This transit time to be guaranteed apart from acts of God etc!

Also in 2003 the directors took the decision to accept an approach from Palletways, the largest overnight pallet network in the UK handling approximately 15,000 per night, to become the network member for South Birmingham. The company had already gained experience of UK domestic pallet traffic when it became a founder member of United Pallet Network 1999. At the time of the approach from Palletways the company was inputting to UPN approximately 50 pallets per night and delivering the same quantity. The directors forecast good volume growth in the pallet market from the company and set a target of achieving an average input of 200 pallets per night within 3 years. It was felt that the development of a niche market service such as the Swiss Project would provide a significant part of this input growth.

It was also decided. As part of the project, to interface the computer software which would have to be written as part of the project implementation with the Palletways software already used by the company to control collections and deliveries as part of its membership of the pallet network. This was to provide door to door track and trace facilities for consignments distributed both on the companys own vehicles and via the Palletways network.