Tesco has chosen RackCare’s online racking management system to manage the safety and maintenance of its racking complexes. Over the past year the retail giant has commissioned several new distribution centres – each routinely more than one million square feet in size, and fitted out with massive racking systems.
The safe and effective management of these racking installations is not only costly, but a demanding job for Tesco’s maintenance team. Tesco’s safety ethos is strict on racking safety standards, and demands a minimum of weekly inspections. This is combined with the need for fast return to service of any location lost to damage. The RackCare system provides real-time reports on safety and operational issues, which improves the visibility and understanding of racking status, and enables speedier rectification and return to service.
Tesco introduced RackCare into two of its sites for evaluation trials. After a few weeks it became clear that the process was quicker, and was delivering an integrated management control at both site and national level. After three months of trials the retailer began full-scale national implementation of the RackCare process, and plans to have all Tesco racked environments operating on the RackCare system by November this year.
The RackCare process will then provide an online, consolidated view of all Tesco sites accessed via the internet. This will enable both regional and national management access to individual site records and real-time performance.
James Fenton, Tesco’s maintenance manager network development, says: “The RackCare process allows us to have a corporate system that gives us full compliance to our strict health and safety policy while offering our site maintenance teams a simpler, more user-friendly management tool. Not only has it reduced administration, it is generating meaningful information that both the maintenance and operational teams use to improve our business performance.
“This aspect of overview means that I can be assured that racking is controlled to our standard throughout our network and issues are immediately identified. Racking is a fundamental part of our business; we need to know it is working for us.”
