The recently privatised South Western Electricity Plc is very proud of its new UKP3m automated warehouse in Exeter and was showing it off last week. The existing Sowton warehouse could not cope with the expected future growth of its network of high street shops and superstores, a major warehouse expansion was necessary. The UK end of Sprecher & Schuh AG of Zurich, and Walter Stocklin AG, Dornach, Swiss materials management and warehousing specialists, were called in to find a solution. They designed a more efficient working method to improve throughput and use of space, which made it possible to use the existing building with an extension added to it. To co-ordinate the new mechanical handling equipment installed by Stocklin, Sprecher & Schuh fitted a Tandem NonStop CLX 720 fault-tolerant minicomputer, which replaced the old IBM 8100, with communication links with all sections of the warehouse, and with the IBM mainframe in Plymouth, which downloads each day’s delivery orders and receives updated inventory records overnight. The Tandem keeps track of all products; in the warehouse, it can supervise man rider stacker cranes through radio data terminals, and Programmable Logic Controllers are used to check all physical movement of the pallets and update the central computer’s logical image of pallet location. Although Sprecher & Schuh used to work with DEC computers, they now mostly opt for Tandem machines because, although they are slightly slower than DEC VAXes, it offers fault-tolerance with mirrored disk pairs, includes real-time support and offers good transaction processing. The software, running under Tandem’s Guardian operating system, was written by Sprecher & Schuh in the Tandem TAL language at its Aston Science Park offices. Working to the maxim ‘storage systems trap investment, movement systems set it free’, they set about creating an integrated system which would create increased storage and mobility of goods and as well as control over the automated selection and storing mechanisms. The warehouse serves the existing high street shops as well as the new and expanding series of superstores. In order to increase efficiency to the customer the warehouse also had to be able to accommodate seasonal variations in demands for goods, different stock sizes, general variations in demand as well as the future growth of the company. The present system enables the electricity distributor to keep tabs on goods from the moment of identification in the warehouse until successful delivery is confirmed. It has also made a big impact on working conditions. Of the 35 workers employed prior to the automation, 25 remain, though Roger Close, warehouse manager, stressed that the majority of workers had been lost through attrition rather than redundancy. He claims that employees welcomed the changes as they felt more involved using the technology which also facilitated their jobs. He cites the example of the crusher house, where non-deliveries and old machines were stored. The operator uses a Telxon hand-held terminal to update the Tandem which, he claims, cut down the job by about 50%. South-Western Electricity was relatively restrained in information technology and capital spending prior to privatisation in comparison with other regional electricity companies. In March 1990, for example, Eastern upgraded to a new top-end Bull DPS 9000 mainframe in an order worth more than UKP10m. Arthur Andersen, which acted as advisor to the electricity industry in the run-up to the flotation, estimates that spending at each of the companies on renovating systems could reach UKP40m each, making a total of UKP480m.
