Franglais:
Having trouble with links, but Minford thinks we will be better off as country if we run down car manufacturing, as we have run down steel and coal. He reckons we will be better off importing cheaper foreign foods than producing them ourselves.
I’m sure you’ll have no problem finding him out there.
Sounds like he’s a [zb] then. And there’s me thinking he’s pinched my idea after what you said.
China is shipping large quantities of medical equipment and medical staff to Europe at the moment. Global cooperation is a wonderful goal and the examples so far are to be applauded, but we have already seen examples of intentions to block export of vital supplies ordered by another country. One cannot really blame any country’s leaders for acting in this way since their obligations a first and foremost to its own citizens. This is why there must always be a strategic reserve capacity in our manufacturing capability regardless of cost and competitiveness.
Indeed.
I can see Macron working to form a European strategic supply system-it would make sense to do something like Airbus has done so successfully (several countries cooperating on a large project) to ensure this.
Quite what Boris will do for the UK is unclear. From today´s news perhaps he might leave it to Dyson who claims to have respirators designed, prototypes manufactured and awaiting approval.
There are several other companies as well as Dyson coming to the call and diversifying production away from there normal work which is very good, we need this spirit to stem this virus and hopefully beat it. On another point the wife of one of our drivers is a receptionist at a big hospital and she said she has had to deal with people just turning up because they have sneezed once, these actions are inconsiderate on an already highly pressured NHS, Buzzer.
There was a young MD of a specialist medical parts producer on TV last night who’s parts were used in the manufacture of Ventilators well he had contacted the Gov a month ago to attempt to see what was going to be needed and he was sent a load of forms to fill in and submit which he did. Since then zero response from HMG ! This young Guy knew what he was talking about and he reckoned it will be a number of weeks away before any hope that full production could begin and he couldn’t understand why HMG wasn’t going to the existing manufactures to have them scale up production. It was all well and good getting the likes of Dyson involved but nothing will happen quickly. He also said that one of his vital Subbies was working 24/7 but was still thinking of shutting down because of the shambles HMG was making of the job ! But from what I can make out there will not be anywhere near the number of Ventilators ready by the time the expected peak of the virus hits us in 2/3 weeks time so many are going to die through a lack of a Ventilator !! And do you know what as and when the recriminations start after, hopefully, everything gets back to normal Boris and his crony Ministers are going to say " Sorry Guv not us we only worked to the medical and scientific advice we were given along the way" !!! The ■■■■■ knew there was going to be a peak somewhere along the way so why didn’t they “jump on the shovel” when someone shouted “■■■■” in China. I was a strong Boris fan up to this load of crap coming down on our heads and all he seems to have been doing is waffling along with his spineless ■■■■■■■ Ministers they haven’t got a ■■■■■■■ clue but are still happy to tell blatant lies along with keeping a straight face and looking concerned ! I will acknowledge of course that Boris and his right hand men are still a far better proposition than what the alternative would have been---- Corbyn and his bunch of lefties— then we would seriously be in the doo doo good and proper by now. However at times like this it really does show up the deficiencies in all Politicians and it is not a very reassuring position to be in ! Cheers Bewick.
I think that realistically only a month ago very few people imagined that this situation would escalate to the proportions it has now become? I know that only a few weeks ago I was shaking hands with folk and we were laughing about that it was unlikely to affect us in the UK much as it was mostly in Asia and on a cruise ship. We now know that wasn’t the case but it’s a thin line between spending a lot of money on equipment ‘just incase’ and then getting pilloried for doing that as the problem never arose and the expensive equipment then wasn’t needed, or sitting back and waiting to see if the situation develops and then pilloried for doing nothing when this happens? Just like being married really, no matter what you do it can never be right for everyone! Still the situation shouldn’t last much longer as that very knowledgeable Mr Trump reckons it will all be over by Easter, however I seem to remember reading that WW1 was going to be over by Christmas 1914 and that didn’t happen either!
gingerfold:
^^^^^^^
Yes we try to get 26 pallets on every load, it doesn’t always work out exactly to 26, because we’re working on different delivery “waves” within the 24 hour cycle that starts at midnight. So Friday’s deliveries can start going into RDC after midnight Thursday. Certain categories of products are wave, 1, wave 2, and wave 3, with cut off times for each wave. We do a daily load average of pallets, most days we achieve 25.5, which is in effect 26 spaces. The office load planners juggle things around with pallets totals from every supplier to maximise trailer loads.
Supermarkets place their orders with suppliers in real time, all the supermarket tills transmit information about the volumes of every product being sold back to a central ordering computer. The bar code on packaging doesn’t just have the price for the till scanner to register, it has details of the product, pack size and so on. Sales volumes for every product are then adjusted for the next day, depending on what day of the week it is. Sales adjustments are also factored in for variables such as the weather forecast. For example in summer if a nice weekend is forecast then fresh meat orders will be increased in anticipation of people having barbeques. Thursday and Friday tend to be the biggest volume days into RDCs, Monday and Tuesday the lowest days. Last Saturday was massive, one of the biggest non-Christmas days we’ve ever had. The problem at the present time is that there’s no stored computer details for adjusting orders to fall back on. The bottleneck is still the RDCs, they’re not shifting deliveries from RDCs into stores quickly enough.
Thanks for explaining that Graham,someone had told me that the computer ordered the stock but your explanation makes that
clearer.
Unfortunately the idiots are still panic buying as i went to co op at 6am this morning as was shopping for 3 old un’s , a 75,80 and 90
year old. All relatives and there was no bread,long life milk, toilet rolls, kitchen rolls,and not one bar of soap ,bloody pain in the arse !
I was hoping the idiots may have calmed down by now but they dont seem to be taking any notice of being told not to panic buy !
gingerfold:
^^^^^^^
Yes we try to get 26 pallets on every load, it doesn’t always work out exactly to 26, because we’re working on different delivery “waves” within the 24 hour cycle that starts at midnight. So Friday’s deliveries can start going into RDC after midnight Thursday. Certain categories of products are wave, 1, wave 2, and wave 3, with cut off times for each wave. We do a daily load average of pallets, most days we achieve 25.5, which is in effect 26 spaces. The office load planners juggle things around with pallets totals from every supplier to maximise trailer loads.
Supermarkets place their orders with suppliers in real time, all the supermarket tills transmit information about the volumes of every product being sold back to a central ordering computer. The bar code on packaging doesn’t just have the price for the till scanner to register, it has details of the product, pack size and so on. Sales volumes for every product are then adjusted for the next day, depending on what day of the week it is. Sales adjustments are also factored in for variables such as the weather forecast. For example in summer if a nice weekend is forecast then fresh meat orders will be increased in anticipation of people having barbeques. Thursday and Friday tend to be the biggest volume days into RDCs, Monday and Tuesday the lowest days. Last Saturday was massive, one of the biggest non-Christmas days we’ve ever had. The problem at the present time is that there’s no stored computer details for adjusting orders to fall back on. The bottleneck is still the RDCs, they’re not shifting deliveries from RDCs into stores quickly enough.
Dean watching the news last night it showed a clip outside a supermarket in Italy, all waiting outside two meters apart and stocked up shelves when there turn to go in, no panic buying at all. Me I went to the greengrocers at 9am and it was not open but I know him well and went round the back where he was un loading the stuff from market this morning, he let me through the rear of the shop and I got all I needed plus the milk, paid with a zap card as he is only taking payment this way now, home and the Boss is staggering shifts in the office with her sister so went in late. Me I had to walk the dog down the marsh ground so did the full circuit to make sure all the fences are good ready for turnout, very quiet and only saw two others out walking. Buzzer
Thanks for explaining that Graham,someone had told me that the computer ordered the stock but your explanation makes that
clearer.
Unfortunately the idiots are still panic buying as i went to co op at 6am this morning as was shopping for 3 old un’s , a 75,80 and 90
year old. All relatives and there was no bread,long life milk, toilet rolls, kitchen rolls,and not one bar of soap ,bloody pain in the arse !
I was hoping the idiots may have calmed down by now but they dont seem to be taking any notice of being told not to panic buy !
GF’s daily update on the supermarkets (maybe I should have a blog…)
I had noticed that this week’s daily RDC total load numbers were very similar to those of last week so I had a chat with the main man at head office. It appears that a definite pattern has now appeared and current high levels will probably be the norm for the next few weeks. Not so much because of panic buying of fresh food now, but as a result of the population having to stay in and prepare food at home. It will be interesting to see if the producers, packers, and suppliers can keep up. We probably won’t see a proportional uplift at Easter like we normally do as everyone is already at home. Maybe lamb orders will still be massive as they usually are at Easter, and most of the NZ lamb is already in store.
There is now a definite reduction in frozen food deliveries as food serve businesses are losing their usual guaranteed catering outlets, I deliver two multi-drop frozen groupage trailers in the north west every day (trunked from main depot overnight). Usually there is an average 5 drops on each trailer; tomorrow one trailer has three drops, the second one has four drops. One of today’s was just two drops.
The orders for for fresh food packaging are well beyond seasonal norms at present. Multiple loads are going into the same packhouses, which seem to be coping with demand.
Thanks GF and CAV551 for these very interesting updates of really the normal day to day running of transport. I have been explaining to lads at work some of the facts that you have stated and to a person (as none of them have ever been involved in the industry) they have been amazed and also interested in how the modern day supply chain works. I say keep up the updates and also to all your drivers keep up the sterling work.
I’ll copy what I put on the prof section in answer to a query since now there are enquiries on here about the supply chain. I’ll add that just one packaging supplier has some 90 different cardboard containers and 50 different plastic punnets available for various fresh foods . These are either supplied as blanks for customer machine assembly, or for hand completion. Some are supplied to customer already made up and glued by machine. I’ll try to find out but my guesstimate is that it takes the machine between three and five seconds to make a box. Depending on the size there may be 150 to possibly as many as 400 on a pallet. Each supermarket specifies the size and design of carton for many (not all) lines of product. This is apart from the various supermarkets’ own reusable trays of which there are many differrent ones - all of which have to be washed between uses.
Copied:
Why are we not seeing long queues of supermarket lorries at all the individual shops and why are the shelves empty if there is plenty of product in the supply chain? With apologies to grandma, for those who don’t know: Very simple. The amount of handling required between source and the shelf. If we start at the packhouse or processing plant and discount the inbound transport and handling of the raw product and its packaging, and the time required to switch a production line from one product to another, then the typical plant will produce numerous products (say 10) for orders from its main supermarket customers (say 3) which will be on pallets for the required number of RDCs (say 4- 7 for each ‘name’) Fowlers etc collect maybe three times a day (quite often a delay because it is not ready) and it is sorted into RDC loads from several collections (10/20?) a delay is often usual. We know the next bit 1 - 3 RDCs on the trailer and the waiting time. Once in the RDC there will be some 50 - 2/300 shops to supply. Each individual product type (however many thousand) has to taken from the bulk pallets and put either on another pallet or in a cage in an isle on the warehouse floor - ambient, chilled or frozen - earmarked for particular shops (say a choice of around 10). This is a massive task and the principle source of delay, often because one or two products are late so the trailer can’t leave or that product has to be omitted. At the same time some product does not go directly to shops but is trunked to other RDCs for ultimate distribution. Depending on the particular supermarket brand some food product is treated differently. Bread, milk, potatoes and tobacco are delivered into shops directly by some chains. Once the supermarket trailer gets to store each individual pallet or cage then has to taken, often from a scissor lift (capacity two pallets or 4 - 10 cages) to the correct temperature stock room, which is often on a different floor via a lift ( capacity 2 - 4 cages or one pallet) along corridors sometimes no more than a three feet wide. The whole back area of the typical shop is usually rammed with cages, shippers, dollies, trays, pallets and recycling all of which has to go back for cleaning, recycling or disposal. This is the next source of delay because the shops get a sales-space enlargement and refit but the warehouse stays the same. In store there is nearly always a chronic shortage of staff - absence is one cause but mainly an absolute determination from head office not to employ sufficient numbers and to rely on the goodwill of their salaried junior level management to work unpaid overtime. And that is the situation every day in normal times.
^^^^^^
Very well put. I will add that the “back door” area of a supermarket has very little available storage area for new deliveries. It is a case of from the delivery it goes onto the shelves as quickly as possible.
When I joined Turners 30 years ago I did a few months as a late shift driver and holiday relief to get a feel for their work. Back then Sainsbury’s was the biggest supermarket customer we had, along with ASDA, and M&S. RDC deliveries then weren’t 24/7, and 8.00 pm was the cut-off time, which sometimes meant it was a close-run thing to meet the more distant RDCs cut-offs such as Middleton or Yate or Warmley. Fresh produce deliveries weren’t accepted before 2.00 pm (or it may have been 3.00 pm). Also in those days drivers went onto the unloading bays so the late delivering drivers would see the floor area of the RDC almost full. One day I got an “early” delivery of spuds to JS Charlton and I actually had to wait to get in. That meant I was first on a bay (spuds were always first in). Seeing the floor area empty for the first time was a shock, I hadn’t realised it was so big. It also made me think how good the operation was in getting all the received deliveries out to the stores every day. Things have changed in 30 years, but the principles of how an RDC operates are still much the same.
gingerfold:
^^^^^^
Very well put. I will add that the “back door” area of a supermarket has very little available storage area for new deliveries. It is a case of from the delivery it goes onto the shelves as quickly as possible.
When I joined Turners 30 years ago I did a few months as a late shift driver and holiday relief to get a feel for their work. Back then Sainsbury’s was the biggest supermarket customer we had, along with ASDA, and M&S. RDC deliveries then weren’t 24/7, and 8.00 pm was the cut-off time, which sometimes meant it was a close-run thing to meet the more distant RDCs cut-offs such as Middleton or Yate or Warmley. Fresh produce deliveries weren’t accepted before 2.00 pm (or it may have been 3.00 pm). Also in those days drivers went onto the unloading bays so the late delivering drivers would see the floor area of the RDC almost full. One day I got an “early” delivery of spuds to JS Charlton and I actually had to wait to get in. That meant I was first on a bay (spuds were always first in). Seeing the floor area empty for the first time was a shock, I hadn’t realised it was so big. It also made me think how good the operation was in getting all the received deliveries out to the stores every day. Things have changed in 30 years, but the principles of how an RDC operates are still much the same.
Hi Graham,
And what a treat Charlton was, especially those 5 or 6 bays towards the top of the depot opposite that concrete wall! But in all fairness I was never in there long!
And those men unloading you weren’t the most helpful. I went in one day and got on a bay, went onto the loading dock, handed my paperwork in at the office in the middle of the floor, and put my keys on the hook on the door. Almost immediately they were on the trailer tipping it and a driver stood on the next bay asked me why as he had been waiting 20 minutes I was being tipped before him. I asked him if he had hung his keys up… no he hadn’t and didn’t know he had to. None of the unloaders had told him he had to hang his keys up or else he wouldn’t get tipped, it was his first time there.
Mentioning the concrete wall, the JS Hackbridge depot was worse for getting on the four produce receiving bays at the end. The wall was on an angle which made bays 3 and 4 very awkward to reverse onto at the best of times. and they had a habit of leaving a waste skip there which made it even worse. There was an incident most nights, someone would either clip the bay pillars supporting the roof, (they were open bays), or catch the front nearside corner of the cab on the skip. Usually some other driver would act as a banksman for you, but not always. I grazed one of the pillars one night with the corner of the trailer. Happy days!
And those men unloading you weren’t the most helpful. I went in one day and got on a bay, went onto the loading dock, handed my paperwork in at the office in the middle of the floor, and put my keys on the hook on the door. Almost immediately they were on the trailer tipping it and a driver stood on the next bay asked me why as he had been waiting 20 minutes I was being tipped before him. I asked him if he had hung his keys up… no he hadn’t and didn’t know he had to. None of the unloaders had told him he had to hang his keys up or else he wouldn’t get tipped, it was his first time there.
Mentioning the concrete wall, the JS Hackbridge depot was worse for getting on the four produce receiving bays at the end. The wall was on an angle which made bays 3 and 4 very awkward to reverse onto at the best of times. and they had a habit of leaving a waste skip there which made it even worse. There was an incident most nights, someone would either clip the bay pillars supporting the roof, (they were open bays), or catch the front nearside corner of the cab on the skip. Usually some other driver would act as a banksman for you, but not always. I grazed one of the pillars one night with the corner of the trailer. Happy days!
I’d forgotten about Hackbridge, what a bunch of unhelpful people they was! You could not see backing in to the bays used for dry goods as it was pitch black.
Buntingford was ok and Basingstoke not too bad as I remember I tipped myself there one day, the electric pallet truck must have been one of the first that Lansing Bagnall must have manufactured!
I’d forgotten about Hackbridge, what a bunch of unhelpful people they was! You could not see backing in to the bays used for dry goods as it was pitch black.
Buntingford was ok and Basingstoke not too bad as I remember I tipped myself there one day, the electric pallet truck must have been one of the first that Lansing Bagnall must have manufactured!
Hackbridge was always a dark and dingy depot even on a summer evening.
I tipped myself at Basingstoke on more than one occasion. I went there one evening arriving about 7.30 pm with our last produce load. We still had mainly 24 pallet trailers then, and I had a mixed 23 pallets load on a 24 pallet trailer. Also back then ordering wasn’t as sophisticated as it is now, so there were a lot of late order adjustments on the load. The paperwork pile was about 3" thick when I handed it in. We had to help breakdown loads for checking, so the receiving clerk said to me “tip yourself drive, we’re short of people tonight but I’ll get someone to help you break it down.” Yeah I thought to myself. So I got the electric truck, tipped it, and broke down the load into all the products. It was supposed to be one product per pallet, but you could get away with 3 or 4 products on one pallet if the quantities were small, such as 6 cartons of limes, and so on. When I’d finished, without any help, my 23 pallets had become 43 pallets scattered about the place. I went back to goods in widow and jokingly said “give me the labels and I’ll check it for you”. No scanning then it was a roll of labels with product and quantity, a physical count of the cartons or trays and if the number matched what was on the label it was stuck on the stack of trays. Calling my bluff the clerk handed me the rolls of labels, so I went and checked it all, stuck the labels on, signed the load as correct, got my empty blue pallets (no one way trip then) and went home. It was a DIY load that night.
Just like being married really, no matter what you do it can never be right for everyone! 
Still the situation shouldn’t last much longer as that very knowledgeable Mr Trump reckons it will all be over by Easter, however I seem to remember reading that WW1 was going to be over by Christmas 1914 and that didn’t happen either! 
