Case Study - UK’s Largest Plant Bread Bakers

29 September 2016
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Originally part of the RHM group, now Premier Foods. British Bakeries Ltd. is one of the UK's largest plant bread bakers. British Bakeries has 6,500 employees and brands like Hovis, Mothers Pride and Nimble and delivers daily to thousands of major retailers and small independent stores. Key customers include Tesco, J. Sainsbury, Asda, Somerfield, Safeway and Co-op. The operation is run via a huge complicated network of distribution centres, regional cross docking operations and production bakeries supplying 16 million loaves and 6 million packs of 450 different SKU’s. On top of this products such as crumpets, fruit buns, rolls scones and pancakes are integrated into 24hr 365 day a week operation.

Key Issues

Overall network complicated with huge amounts of crossover and duplication, especially with other Group networks supporting other supply chains
High cost of a fluctuating Service
Backhaul for vehicles at around 55% empty on long distance journeys
Main distribution network and overall production scheduling programme out of synchronisation causing delays and excessive costs in service fines
Overall performance of main distribution centres badly operated, measures not clear, high levels of in-discipline, very little standardisation

What we did

After an 8 week assessment of the overall supply chain network we put in place 2 key programmes to support the operation:

Vehicle backhaul improvement programme using cooperative communication and data sharing opportunities within the group
Improvement programme to simplify the overall network strategy – focusing on overall logistics improvements such as improved vehicle utilisation, improved delivery planning and footprint review of all the existing supporting facilities – both production and distribution