Investing in technology to improve performance

2nd December 2019

At R&HA, we regularly invest in new technology to improve the way we do day-to-day tasks.

It’s the marginal gains such improvements bring about that can have a big impact on helping our customers to become more streamlined and minimise inefficiencies.

Over the past two years, we have been working with our insurance partners on a robust risk management plan to mitigate the insurance risks within our business.

This has resulted in us achieving a £5,000 annual rebate from our insurer. We have utilised this by investing in a suite of new iPads to help our internal audit team streamline their operations and be able to produce real-time reports which can be saved directly into our central document management software and shared across the organisation.

Our investments in technology are being self-funded by the improvements we are making within the business.

It’s a continuous cycle which means we are always evolving and can continue to grow our customer offering and provide high-quality supply chain solutions to our automotive customers.

Although new technology can help the business to become more streamlined, it can also have a big impact on our health and safety management.

Continuously improving plant health and safety is a major priority for R&HA and we’re constantly on the lookout for new best practice ideas.

One of the biggest safety risks across all our sites is the use of MHE trucks. In a recent innovation, we’ve started trialling the use of safety cameras on the forks of reach trucks to reduce incidents of damage in our warehouses.

It means that rather than looking up eight metres and judging where a pallet should go, the MHE operators have a clean view of the space they are working in through a screen in front of them, so can manage their approach accordingly.

Launching this trial has had a significant impact on the number of incidents and the accidental damage being caused to racking and pallets loaded with product.

The trial has been so successful, in fact, that we are hoping to invest in more cameras, which will be funded by offsetting against reducing the number of incidents and damage.

Aubrey Leeson, our HSE manager said: 

“Best practice in health and safety management is a key priority for R&HA, so we are always looking for new technologies and innovations to help us find a better way of doing things and improving on our already impeccable safety record. Investing in technology can often bring about transformational change and, as an industry leader, it’s important that we continue to push the boundaries and take an innovative approach to everything we do.

“That doesn’t just mean identifying which new technologies might work for us, it also means taking a pragmatic approach to the way we do things and looking at the opportunities that changes in our own processes may bring when it comes to funding our investment in technology to make the business better. At the end of the day, it all comes down to hitting our overall objective of continually providing leaner, smarter, more efficient automotive supply chain and logistics solutions to our customers.”

Here’s how the 360 onsite logistics audit and assessment works!

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