Lean Picking Operation for Diet Chef
31/08/2010
Diet Chef is now the largest diet home delivery company with over 25,000 customers from all over the UK and Northern Ireland.
Diet Chef meals are prepared by real chefs in a kitchen, not just mass produced on a production line. The meals are healthy with absolutely no nasty artificial ingredients and all of the food is made in Britain and all of the meat and poultry is British.
Due to the continuous and significant growth of the Diet Chef business they engaged the specialist Warehouse team at Gideon Hillman Consulting to develop and ensure that the logistics, warehouse and order picking operations and resources were optimised for current and future operational requirements.
The consultants successfully delivered the optimised design(s) for warehouse and picking / packing facility layouts for current and future volumes based upon growth expectations over the next 3 to 5 years. This included the provision of scale CAD drawing(s) showing rack and equipment layouts and defined work areas, a full bill of equipment required for suppliers to quote against and an MHE requirement list (Hand truck, FLT, reach truck, order pickers etc).
A set of Standard Operating Procedures (SOP’s) for all aspects of warehouse, picking & packing operations and an optimised Warehouse Resource plan (people and shift pattern) were provided to ensure the cost per item picked is minimised once the new facility layout design is implemented.
During the course of the project the consultants were able to make a capacity assessment of the fully optimised existing facility in terms of maximum volume throughput and operational capabilities.
In addition they carried out a full review of the WMS requirements and developed a draft list of system requirements to suit the new operation.
"The consultants ensured that the project was delivered on time and met all of our objectives; working with them was a great experience". Operations Director - Diet Chef Ltd
