Hyundai has grown to be the world’s fifth-largest motor group in less than 50 years, selling 4.05m vehicles in 2011.
Supporting the firm’s network of more than 360 dealerships in the UK is its wholly-owned aftermarket company, Mobis Parts Europe UK.
In 2006, Mobis invested in a parts distribution centre for the UK in Tamworth, Staffordshire, to be outsourced and run by Unipart Logistics.
At the time of go-live, the facility was receiving up to 19 containers a day and had four inbound streams coming in from Mobis in Korea and India, from other European warehouses in Belgium, Slovakia and Sweden, from local suppliers, and from the previous UK warehouse operation in Fradley.
Over an eight-week period from July the site received 28,000 lines, and by the end of 2008 another 25,000 lines had been transferred over from Fradley.
Neil Bennett, manager of Unipart Logistics’ operation at Mobis in Tamworth, says: “When we started the contract, the idea was to have the front half of the warehouse for Hyundai and the back half for Kia, but as the warehouse filled up we realised that we had to integrate the two, despite the increa-sed complexity. The mezzanine areas, for small parts, are kept separate, but that’s it.”
Inbound lines increased from 1,000 to 1,300 lines per day, and despatched lines have risen from some 4,500 to nearly 6,000 lines a day.
“Our target for both discrepancies and denials is 0.05 per cent, but we achieve 0.01 per cent most weeks,” says Bennett.
