Mar 2004
SAINSBURY’S ONE STEP AHEAD WITH MILLER’S VANGUARD
Cleaning and maintenance, however ‘unsexy’ the subject matter, is core to the FM market. Gone are the days when Dave’s Dynamic Dusters mops the floor at one branch of a supermarket and Betty’s Brushes cleans at a sister store down the road. Today it’s a much slicker operation with facilities management companies specialising in coordinating the tangle of suppliers thus taking the headache away from the customer while offering a consistent quality service alongside essential cost efficiencies.
One aspect of cleaning and maintenance facilities management is offering strategic foodservice equipment maintenance, cleaning and repair to retailers, large and small bakeries and chains of ‘food-to-go’ delis.
An example of this in practice is at Sainsbury’s supermarket where Miller’s Vanguard provides all reactive maintenance (breakdowns) and scheduled maintenance (routine services) to Sainsbury’s Food To Go, Staff Canteens, Customer Restaurants and Bakery departments as well as its store of reserve machinery.
The contract to supply FM to over 500 Sainsbury’s stores was awarded on the strength of an 11 store trial where Miller’s demonstrated a significant reduction in machinery downtime in stores by 33% over a seven month period. On the strength of this performance a three-year, multi million pound deal to supply food preparation maintenance to Sainsbury’s supermarkets across the UK was awarded. Sainsbury’s sees outsourcing the FM for its reactive and scheduled maintenance as a crucial step to ensuring the prolonged lifetime of the machinery as well as ensuring the reduction of breakdowns.
The FM contract is based on Miller’s Vanguard actively reducing the likelihood of equipment breaking down within Sainsbury’s stores by putting in place as many preventative maintenance techniques as possible. The Miller’s dedicated call centre, which operates 24 hours a day, provides Sainsbury’s store and departmental managers with a direct point of contact should equipment break down, and it’s a very busy operation. In the first couple of months of the contract the call centre was receiving over 250 calls a day requiring an intensive period of ‘bedding-in’ the contract. As well as responding to call centre calls, in the first week of the contract over 50 new pieces of bakery production equipment were introduced across the stores to enhance productivity, followed in the second week with an intensive programme to exchange the centre shaft in over 100 Food to Go Chicken Rotisseries.
To support the smooth operation of the FM contract, Miller’s has introduced a loan programme for customers to ensure that replacements for the most popular pieces of equipment in the stores, such as microwaves and toasters, are always available should an item break down. Brent Miller, Managing Director, Miller’s Vanguard comments: “Developing close links with equipment manufacturers and suppliers is essential in facilities management so that unnecessary downtime is prevented.”
Brent Miller, concludes: “This is the first time that one specialist supplier has provided the national programme of machinery maintenance and repair to Sainsbury’s so there has been the inevitable ‘settling-in’ period but I am confident in saying that all the stores have benefited from the programme which has significantly increased downtime due to machinery failure which has a direct affect on increasing productivity.”
About Miller’s Vanguard
Miller’s Vanguard provides specialist maintenance for bakery & catering equipment and is a business name of the AFE Group - the market leader in the domestic and commercial catering equipment industry.
For further information or to arrange an interview with Brent Miller, Miller’s Vanguard’s Managing Director, please contact:
Eve Rigby, Marcomms Manager
Tel: 0161 764 7374
Fax: 0161 761 5141
E-mail: eve.rigby@millersvanguard.co.uk