Quinn Radiators awarded Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport Annual Award for Excellence

HRH Princess Anne presented the prestigious Award for Materials Handling Equipment and Technology to Quinn Radiators at the CILTs awards evening held at the London Marriott Hotel.  Ciarn Doherty, Operations Manager at Quinn Radiators and Andy Blair, Sales Manager at Swisslog, accepted the award at the ceremony.

The CILT Annual Awards for Excellence aim to highlight the achievements of the very best in order to encourage the highest standards of excellence in the Transport and Logistics industry.

Says Ciarn Doherty, Operations Manager at Quinn Radiators: "Quinn Radiators are delighted to have received this award in recognition of the innovative and industry leading approach we have adopted to our logistics and storage challenge. The award is also a testament to the excellent partnership developed with Swisslog who have delivered a solution that we believe is second to none and will pay dividends in the years ahead."

Pieter Feenstra, Managing Director for Swisslog UK said Swisslog is very proud that our customer Quinn Radiators has received this important CILT award, especially since the main reasons for receiving the award were due to this project increasing Quinns customer service levels and reducing their costs significantly. These criteria are always paramount to Swisslog when designing, implementing and maintaining logistics solutions.

Halved order lead-times

The winning award submission detailed how Swisslog, a global supplier of integrated logistics solutions, helped to create one of the most modern and efficient production and storage sites worldwide for Quinn, the largest manufacturer of domestic and designer radiators in the UK.

Faced with the task of improving the handling of Quinn Radiators' large and varied product range, Swisslog set about developing automated handling for radiators. Following successful trials with magnetic grippers they were able to incorporate this solution into a fully automated, 40 metre high, storage facility.  This has flexible size locations, and can handle 4 production pallet sizes, and pick to any of 80 dispatch pallet sizes. 

In operation Quinn have been able to halve order lead-times, achieved almost 100% on time in full, and reduced staff significantly. The resultant savings were more than double that planned and the return on investment was achieved earlier than expected.