The Food Storage and Distribution Federation has launched a programme of events to help support its members with their planning and preparations for the London 2012 Olympic Games.
Recent research by BT published recently claims that almost a third of logistics companies run the risk of not capitalising on the economic opportunity of the Olympics, because they have not made basic preparations such as staffing, routeing and planning modelling and adapting delivery schedules.
“The announcement made by BT relating to the preparations being made by logistics companies in time for the Olympics is quite concerning. With under 200 days remaining until the games begin, we strongly recommend that companies start to look into their planning process to make sure they maximise their organisations effectiveness during the games, as well as their profitability,” said FSDF chief executive Chris Sturman.
“The FSDF has already begun a programme of Olympics Planning Workshops, helping to ensure its members continue to satisfy their customers requirements and maintain food supplies to businesses and consumers in London, as well as providing practical advise on how to manage their businesses through the disruption and congestion that is forecast for London during the Olympic period between July and mid-September.”
Working with Transport to London, the FSDF has developed a programme of five workshops. At the first event which took place in early January, Dave Silvey of TfL examined in detail the Olympic and Paralympic Route Networks (ORN/PRN), the restrictions that will be applied to traffic other than that which relates to the Olympic Family and provided detailed information on how best to keep operations running while the grand event is happening around London.
This was followed by a presentation from Map Mechanics providing advice on how best to use geo-mapping and GPS in conjunction with existing routing and scheduling software to optimise customer service and delivery performance.
