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John Thomson  

Thomson report

"So what we did is we implemented a warehouse management program and a bar standard program and we re-racked our entire warehouse, very scientifically. We took our productivity in our warehouse from 85% per man-hour for the last 12 to 18 months to 172%. We have doubled out productivity already. We used to make errors one in every 400 pieces we would pick up, in a typical week we would have 200 to 225 errors. Now with the new scanning system having fifteen errors a week is a bad week. So that works out to one in every three thousand with the bar scanners. Just an amazing lift in personal achievement for the staff."

That is Rob Cinkant speaking, the president and CEO of Sysco Kelowna, the giant food distribution company in North America. The Kelowna facility looks after customers all over British Columbia with some accounts actually in Vancouver. So their trucks and sales force are on the move all the time. He was speaking about the changes the company has made over the last few years to get more efficient and customer friendly. The man thinks “green” and is very much involved in the environment and the way to make Sysco a better citizen.

“Number one we wanted to create efficiency and so we have done things like bring natural light into the warehouse and if it gets dark the lights come on and it works wonderfully. We have saved as many steps as possible when you get off the machine. The crew is picking three pallets at a time. We make tweaks and little adjustments and our machine just works better and faster. Primarily that is what we have been working on for the last couple of years.”

You have earned some awards while your were doing it as well?

“Two environmental awards in the last year and WorkSafe magazine honored us for our safety procedures. Safety is just part of our culture here for ten years. When Bill Redman was here he was all about safety. We have just been stepping it up a notch. Here we have routines for stretching before we begin shifts for instance.”

How many people are employed here?

“Full time we have 170 as we increased our geographical territory. We have added Quesnel and Prince George and we were awarded the IHA contract so now we do all of the IHA facilities. All next day delivery. It is quite a challenge every day.

I think the last time you were here we had leased out some of our space to a couple of businesses but we have taken all that over now and are looking ahead to expansion in the next twelve to eighteen months.

The other thing we have been doing a good job at is “green routing”. In other words we point our trucks in one direction so they are not going all over making deliveries. So we are not zig-zagging all over the place and making a delivery here and then coming back to the same area in the afternoon. It reduces the miles we travel and of course the fuel we use. It is all done in the office here and we are not as efficient as we would like to be and this is our goal for next year. All of the territories we cover will be under the “green routing” program. Which will again reduce our miles driven and fuel consumption.”


How many trucks do you have?

“Thirty.”

What are you seeing for the future?

“Over the last twenty-five years food service has been capturing more of the market that we called “shared stomachs” away from retail. Two years ago that changed when retail foods figured it out that we couldn’t keep losing food sales to restaurants, so what do we do? I have read in your column about the food stores and their focus on food to take home and reheat and the new deli’s in all the big box stores etc. More and more of the “shared stomachs” trend was affecting restaurant business and how do they get that back? Was it through restaurants providing home meal replacements alternatives, more take out? You are seeing our customers promoting local food stuffs and buying local produce and we as a company went out to some of the farmers in the valley and said we’ll buy your products if you can deliver. We had dedicated a person from our staff to go up and down the valley to talk to farmers and manufacturers about our initiatives and are you interested? Do you have a piece of land you are not growing anything on at the moment and would you be interested in growing produce we can sell if we commit to buying it from you? Over the next couple of years John this is really going to take off.

There are standards because of the rules we must operate under so there is a lot of work to get coordinated and get it together. We are very excited about the prospects and have done a study on this very subject and the possibilities are endless.”


There certainly could be a situation that you could talk a farmer into growing something they haven’t grown before if there is a demand for it in the market?

“No question about it and we can offer the service within a 100 miles of their home. We are kind of the starter of this idea in the company and we are going to make it happen.”


More John Thomson articles

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About the Author

John Thomson is the Okanagan's pre-eminent business columnist writing his column, Rumours and Things, for over 24 years. Plugged in to the valley's who's who, John keeps his readers coming back for more with his straight talk and optimistic perspective on where we are headed next.

When John is not writing his column, he runs a sixteen year old think tank called the Executive Roundtable and holds his popular "Thomson Presents" quarterly business speaker seminars.

Have a comment, question, or tip for John? 

E-mail John at
[email protected]
or send him a fax at 250-764-8255.

 



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The views expressed are strictly those of the author and not necessarily those of Castanet. Castanet does not warrant the contents.

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