Bedford's Last Mile Home Delivery provides same-day and next-day home delivery of groceries and other goods to customers from local depots, with drivers making multiple stops along scheduled routes each day. The business faces challenges with workforce issues, competition from larger retailers, and maintaining margins. Recommendations include improving workforce retention, increasing customer loyalty through bundling deals, and using data analytics to better forecast inventory needs and reduce waste.

1. Bedford’s Last Mile Home Delivery

2. • Home Delivery
Farm Gate • Responsive
Ordering
• Own Brand
Convenience &
Perishable Goods
• Personal Customer
Service
Dairy Food Processing Order Winners
B2B C
Operational Conflict:
DairyLast minute Cost
Crest:
Suppliers ordering of
S driven lean D
convenience
goods, with
Depot vrs
next day
Last Mile Customer:
doorstep
Q
delivery, with a
Convenience driven
personal touch F
flexibility
Customer
R

3. Plan control KPI
1600000
1400000
1200000
1000000
Budget
800000
Actual
Variance
600000
400000
200000
0
Total sales Margin

4. Source
Bedford

5. Make

7. Control & KPI
• Centralized management
• Depot manager and staff in complaint zone

8. Inventory Management
• Head office allocation
 goods allocated
based on depot sales
programme(weekly
round sales)
• Supplementary stock
ordered in by the
Depot Manager
• Pull ordering

9. Ordering pattern
• Daily orders: Allied bakeries/ Nuneaton: Dairy
Crest products (6 days a week) – 2 days lead
time
• Weekly orders – External suppliers
(Britvic, Coca cola Schweppes)
• 1-3 week orders - Durston  gardening
products: 3 palletes minimum

10. Arranging
orders
• Daily orders received from
centralized booking system
by 9pm
• Each order is organised into
routes and any further
customer request included
• Order lists per route are
assigned to Drivers: Put on
Pegs
• Drivers go to stock room with
order list: Order is collated
and then loaded into fridge

11. Deliver, Customer and Return

12. Arrive at Depot 2235
Departs Depot 2315
Returns to Depot 0851
9 hr 36
Duration of Route min
8 hr 34
Productive Time min
Frequency of Stops 2.7 mins
Total Route Distance 32 km
Number of Delivery Stops 230
Number of Deliveries 552
Average Deliveries per
stop 2.4
Delivery Stock Value £630.45
Delivery Value (mean) £1.14
Delivery Value (max) £5.97
Delivery Value (min) £0.68
Damaged Goods £6 (est)

13. Delivery Takt Time
1
Delivery
0
Time (20 / 21 Nov 2012)

15. Issues
• Workforce:
– Ageing workforce, struggling to attract new staff
– Long hours for drivers
– Compliance & Adaptive
– Relocation / Challenging staff from MK depot
• Competition:
– Tesco / Abel & Cole
– Tesco is cheaper on unit price
• Margin:
– Historic creditors MK depot closed bedford left to pull debt from
their customers
– Payment cash / doorstep legacy / new banking rules for drivers

16. Recommendations
• Workforce:
• Competition:
– Canvas traditional customers (Senior citizen functions/locations)
– Use tying/ bundling deals to get people paying upfront and tied
in for a long period
• Margin:
– Improve Forecast for inventory to reduce waste.
• Data analysis
– Discount on a one year order of minimum order (with room to
increase order when required)
– add slow moving stock to other popular products (could them
free when a higher margin product is bought)

17. Questions