LONDON – A Costa Express and ToolsGroup project that delivered “staggering results” within six months has won the “Technology” category award at the European Supply Chain Excellence Awards.
The awards, which took place on 6 November, celebrate the highest standards of supply chain management and turn the spotlight on those organisations that are achieving them. The Technology award is given to projects where the use of technology has provided direct and quantifiable benefits to the supply chain.
Costa Express’s winning entry, which centred on its implementation of ToolsGroup’s SO99+ software, explained how the company transformed its ingredients supply chain to support its rapidly-expanding network of self-service coffee machines in airports, stations, garage forecourts and other locations.
The two organisations successfully achieved this transformation in just a few months, creating an approach that is now able to sustain Costa Express’s expansion plans while improving customer service levels across more than 3,200 sites.
Field stock held on site has been reduced by 20 percent and the company now experiences 50 percent fewer delivery refusals.
Costa Express previously relied on estimates generated manually using thousands of interlinked spreadsheets and average sales figures to drive replenishments to machines located at partner sites.
Setting up a dedicated supply chain team and using ToolsGroup’s SO99+ software, the company introduced new demand planning, inventory optimisation and replenishment processes.
Sales data received every four minutes from 3,200 machines is now used to identify trends, forecast demand and set appropriate levels of safety stock, automatically creating a schedule of deliveries to resupply each site without overstocking.
Costa Enterprises’ Supply Chain Manager Chris Clowes said: “We are delighted to have won this award, particularly as the judges clearly recognised the hard work that went into making these challenging plans a reality.
Our partner in this project, ToolsGroup, provided the technological solution that was crucial to changing how we use our data, and which has enabled us to become a more competitive and responsive business, which better services our customers’ needs. It’s great to be recognised for having a great supply chain, as well as great coffee.”
Martin Woodward, MD of ToolsGroup UK, said: “We were very pleased to work with Costa Express’s talented people, helping them to deliver the ambitious changes they were looking for within such a tight timescale. From our point of view, Chris and his team’s professionalism and understanding of their business helped immeasurably to ensure the success of the project.”
With over 1,600 coffee shops in the UK and more than 1,000 overseas, Costa is the fastest growing coffee shop business in the UK and the second largest coffee shop operator in the world.
Costa Express is a a concept created by Costa Coffee of self-service coffee bars.
Source: ToolsGroup
