SIEMENS COMMENCES FIVE-YEAR DEAL WITH J SAINSBURY TO MAINTAIN AUTOMATED DISTRIBUTION DEPOTS
17 October 2005 - Siemens UK

Siemens built the automated handling systems for the facilities at Waltham Point, in Enfield, north London, and on the Hams Hall National Distribution Park, near Birmingham. The two depots are now handling a total of 4 million cases of food every week, a significant improvement on April of last year. This performance has helped Sainsbury's to improve its distribution efficiency and provide the platform for increased sales in the UK grocery market.

Lawrence Christensen, Sainsbury's board member for supply chain, said: 'Last October we doubted that the automated distribution centres would ever work to their full intent, but we have worked hard with Siemens to improve the performance of the depots and the handling systems are now meeting the original capacity targets although this is still at a higher than anticipated operational cost.

'After these significant achievements it is only natural that we want to extend the partnership with Siemens to explore further performance enhancements of our distribution centres. The Siemens team has done an excellent job over the last 12 months and the transfer of service activities to Siemens was seamless.'

Thomas Borghoff, UK managing director of Siemens Logistics and Assembly Systems, said: 'When I started this job in June last year the Sainsbury's project was the most complex ever in our UK company history. Now it is a visible sign of a turnaround and we are working with Sainsbury's to seek further performance and cost improvements.

'The technical management of the facilities was a key to the success of the project. To cement the achievements we formally took over the complete technical service for the two sites in July. When you work intensely with your customers you can very quickly add value and prove the benefits of automated handling systems.'

As part of the five-year agreement, about 100 Sainsbury's colleagues at the two depots have transferred to Siemens. There are no redundancies and Siemens is seeking to fill a small number of additional job vacancies within the service engineering business.

http://www.siemens.co.uk

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