Group Tyre Wholesale installs CAM’s Warehouse Management Solution

Made up of 10 regional members, Group Tyre UK Ltd is one of the UK’s largest tyre wholesalers. Group Tyre UK’s strapline is ‘National Strength, Local Service’, words that reflect the company’s business philosophy and its commitment to customers. Group Tyre UK chairman, Gary Oliver, who also acts as managing director for home counties Group Tyre member and tyre distributor, Group Tyre Wholesale Ltd, and IT manager, John Kingman, explained how the company is working to deliver on its promise, an approach that can be summed up in two words: “transformational IT”. And that specifically means the adoption of CAM’s Warehouse Management System, following on from the earlier adoption by fellow Grouptyre member Magowan’s.

As anyone familiar with the UK tyre wholesale business knows, it is a competitive marketplace. For Gary Oliver, IT is one way to stay on top: “The constant challenge for us is to keep our competitive advantage. At Group Tyre UK we’re continually evolving. We’re determined to stay ahead of the game.”

Group Tyre Wholesale (GTW) are one of the group members that “lead the charge on IT transformation”, shaping and delivering best practice for other Group Members to evaluate, bespoke and adopt. Operating two warehouses in Aylesbury and Potters Bar, GTW stock over 7,000 product lines and circa 150,000 tyres. Stewardship of GTW’s IT infrastructure is led by tyre industry stalwart and IT manager John Kingman, as he explained:

“GTW have always been forward-thinking but one of the key areas we needed to look at was how to optimise our operations, in both our warehouses and out on the road. Some aspects of the business were very heavily paper-based and relying on our warehouse and driver teams not losing ‘that’ sheet of paper or even reading the paper correctly. So many manual checks went with it. We were also relying on spreadsheets to see how the business was performing, but we couldn’t be confident how accurate that was.”

“The idea of being able to really take hold of our data, drill down into it and produce relevant KPI’s was what made us say ‘Yes’ to CAM’s Warehouse Management Solution. It’s been a very timely but key change for GTW.”

As the only inventory warehouse management system designed for the tyre industry, CAM’s Warehouse Management Solution (WMS) is designed and optimised for tyres. Managing both the operational and commercial requirements, WMS coordinates every aspect of the warehouse from ordering new stock, to goods inwards and optimising storage, through to pickers identifying the right tyre and efficiently sequencing customers’ deliveries.

Gary Oliver explained the impact WMS has had for GTW: “It has been a big change for us. It really has been a big, big change. We’ve secured some real benefits, including some that we didn’t think we’d ever get.”

Digitising the warehouse has put the technology in the hands of the operatives at the heart of the warehouse as Kingman explains.

“Now the pickers each have a barcode scanner. It gives them confirmation they are in the right location. Then they scan the tyre’s unique barcode and it confirms they have the correct tyre. We’ve removed the reliance on a sheet of paper that could quite easily get lost or misread in the process.”

“We’d definitely recommend CAM’s Warehouse Management Solution, but you have to be prepared for change.”

Gary Oliver, chairman of Group Tyre UK Ltd and managing director of Group Tyre Wholesale Ltd

Much like other UK businesses, GTW have struggled with recruitment in recent years, but WMS has even had an impact on their HR challenges, as Kingman describes.

“Recruitment is far easier. Prior to WMS, we used to try and get people in that had some experience or some knowledge of tyres. If we didn’t, it was then a long arduous process of training them. How to read a tyre wall. How to find the code on a Bridgestone. I grew up in the tyre industry and started in the warehouse. I know the pain of training someone up and them leaving three months later.

“Now with WMS, it’s about getting them in, showing them the tablet, getting through the machinery training and within the hour, they’re out there picking tyres. They don’t need to understand the tyre, because with the barcode scanner, they can’t go wrong. They just get out there and pick! It’s a win-win.”

The benefits have been felt across the whole GTW team, as Oliver explained:

“We’ve also been able to deskill the management process. We were paying for a role that required someone that knows what and where every tyre is. Thanks to WMS we’ve been able to be a lot more dynamic about using the team that are already here. We’re pulling in less agency staff and have a lot less zero hours contracts. All because we’ve gained control over how we use the team.”

Thanks to WMS’s sequenced processes, efficiency at GTW has soared and as Oliver expands on, that brings with it improvements for the customer.

“It’s all about efficiency. I haven’t got people wandering around trying to find things anymore. It starts from when we place the order. With the products we have ordered. Identifying what they are. It’s important we put them away properly. That way we can then go and find them. It’s all-encompassing really. WMS has delivered huge efficiency gains without question.”

“We are reliant on the barcode scanner now and we very, very rarely lose tyres and with that has come huge improvements in customer service.”

The unique challenges of storing tyres are also addressed by WMS and again GTW have secured further efficiencies thanks to intelligence that empowers optimisation.

“Just before we moved to using WMS and because of COVID, we had too much stock coming. We had no choice but to secure additional warehousing to temporarily store tyres. Our 2 warehouses couldn’t cope. Bring us forward to now and we’re at similar stock levels to what we had back then, but we haven’t had to rent extra space. WMS has given us the visibility to optimise our warehouse storage, to get the additional space without having to make the additional investment.”

GTW’s tyre stock is now uniquely identified with barcodes and can be rapidly and accurately identified & located where ever it is in the supply chain. From goods-in to warehouse stock or on the delivery van, GTW now have real-time operational visibility of every tyre as Oliver and Kingman expand on.

“We’re importing tyres from all over the world and they come with different codes. Some are using QR codes, some IPC numbers and some EAN numbers. The tyre industry is not standardised but all the different codes are handled by WMS. In fact the WMS project has brought the whole of the tyre industry together nationally and internationally.”

“It’s all underpinned by CAM’s Online Tyre Catalogue (OTC) and we’re able to draw upon that. Having the right information in the system, and that can only be driven by something like the OTC. Because for me to manage that manually, day in day out, that just wouldn’t happen.”

In January 2023, GTW issued delivery drivers with tablets as a part of phase 2 of the WMS project. The tablet technology brought with them instant driver efficiencies as Kingman describes, according to CAM.

“Most recently we’ve switched to using the driver tablets as a part of the WMS process. Prior to that, you’d have a bundle of invoices for each delivery. That customer might have 7 or 8 invoices for 1 delivery, checking them off, signing them off, 1 at a time. Now with the driver tablet it’s consolidated into one single signature check on the tablet. That process is a lot more streamlined and a lot more efficient.”

“We’ve got much better data around our deliveries too. We can access real-time information about the driver; whether they’re en route to the customer, on time, or even if they’ve skipped a delivery. We know what time the signature was captured, so we know how long it has taken to make that specific delivery. That’s all fed back and gives us visibility of what our team are doing. I get the complete start to finish on the driver and the delivery without standing over someone’s shoulder. That intelligence allows us to optimise our operations.”

Tracking tyre deliveries at the retail point-of-sale a first

The benefits of working smarter aren’t limited to GTW, as their retail customers are now also able to track their GTW tyre delivery as Kingman elaborated:

“The project has also enabled retailers to track their tyre delivery via MIDaS. We think we’re the first wholesaler in the industry to do that. Our customers can see when the delivery van was dispatched, when it is enroute to them and when it’s just 1 stop away. They also get an ETA that uses real-time traffic intelligence. Plus, when the driver is on onsite, they receive a notification.”

“The half-hour delivery window enables our customers to make informed decisions – when to schedule their work and when to get their customers’ vehicles in. The customer feedback has been really positive.“

Thanks to the greater business intelligence fed by WMS, GTW are able to use operational data to make informed decisions as Oliver explained:

“What gets measured gets done. We couldn’t measure it before. We can now. We know exactly where we are. We know exactly where all the trucks are. And that’s fed through in exceptional customer satisfaction.“

“We’ve got to the point where we can decide we’re the right size for the operation. We now have the visibility to optimise performance. We can see our peak times, our quiet times, when we need more staff. Getting our active reports out and being able to quantify what your team is doing, is the real win. Now we can make those educated decisions.”

So, what’s next for Group Tyre Wholesale? MD Oliver says “The challenge for GTW and all the Group Tyre UK members is to keep our competitive advantage. We’re all keen to stay ahead of the game”.

To deliver that for GTW, Kingman has an ambitious vision.

“We’ve been looking at AI and route planning. Optimising our routes throughout the day. At the point of dispatch, an automated algorithm could really optimise our delivery routes. That could have an impact ecologically – on the amount of CO2 we produce. WMS has strengthened our ties to CAM and we have to make sure we maintain that relationship as CAM are instrumental in our retaining our many advantages over our competitors.”

As with all software delivery projects, the acid test is whether GTW would recommend WMS to the other Group Tyre UK members. Gary Oliver’s answer?

“We’d definitely recommend CAM’s Warehouse Management Solution, but you have to be prepared for change. We’ve changed the behaviour of our people. We’ve unexpectedly witnessed positive cultural change which was sometimes uncomfortable, but nonetheless necessary. Good change management has been key. I’ve shown WMS to the other Group Tyre UK Members and they’re like ‘Oh wow, when can we start?’”