Spares for Tim. Fords
Page 55
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THE huge and growing sales of British-built Ford vehicles and tractors throughout the world, and the fact that there are some 24m. commercial vehicles and cars of this make in use, demand an exceptional spares service, for stocking and replacement.
Realizing that vehicle and tractor sales and repeat orders depend greatly upon first-class after-sales service in this respect, the Ford Motor Co., Ltd., gave priority to their new parts depot and headquarters at Aveley, Essex, some eight miles from the Dagenham works.
The entire organization has been concentrated under one roof and is the first completed major project of the £65m. expansion programme. Here is carried a stock of over 31,500 different items, costing about £3m. to produce, yet home orders can be met in about seven _days, bulk orders from overseas within two to. three Weeks and, within a short time, there will be a 24-hour dispatch service to cover immobilized vehicles, also urgent overseas requirements by air.
Underfloor-chain Conveyor .
Completely modern in its conception, the equipment includes a Towveyor, 3,200-ft. endless underfloor conveyor which tows trolleys throughout the main sections. It works on the principle of the old cable trams and 680 trolleys are used with it, 400 carrying 10 cwt., the others 2 tons. There are also seven Stacatrucs, f our Lansing Bagnali " reach" trucks and two types of pallet trucks—Yale and Towne Worksavers and hand-hydraulic Drink and LTD. Porta baIs.
Loading and unloading are facilitated by 'dock levellers" quickly adjustable hydraulically to the height of a vehicle floor, whilst each double-vehicle bay has a 30-cwt. travelling hoist A special fleet of articulated vehicles carries spares from Dagenham to Aveley. There are three Thames 4D, short-wheelbase oilers working with five special 8-9-ton trailers, 23-ft. long. The floors of these are reinforced to bear loaded pallet trucks, and the sides have thick canvas curtains running on Coburn track, so that each trailer can be unloaded from the sides as well as the rear, which is protected by a roller shutter.
The depot has a ground floor area of 362,000, sq. apart from the offices. There arc 3,000 fluorescent lamps and 41 thermostatically controlled Dravo overhead oil-fired space heaters each producing lm. B.T.O. and the five twovehicle bays 'have up-and-over mechanically operated doors to conserve heat. For storage there are 8,000 post pallets, 1,650 bins stretching for nearly a.mile, and 60 tubular pallet racks.
There are 810,personnel in the stores and 410 in the offices. These deal with some 4m. orders per year. About 21 per cent, of the parts are made in the Ford works, the remainder coming from various contractors. The building cost was £1,500,000.
Even the anti-rust system is mechanized, an overhead conveyor taking " susceptible " parts through tanks of preservatives
With such huge stocks of parts. and the area they cover, the system for locating them must be simple and effective, otherwise much time could be wasted. Therefore every itemhas its own loaation ,number; which is automatically added while the invoices are being prepared, and thestores•.man does not have to worry about' names. .
To promote an even flow of work, each dealer sends his monthly restock. hig orders on a certain day. Those for parts most likely to be required arc shown on a pad which lasts'for a year. When this arrives it is duplicated in a pack of pre-punched cards, each representing a particular item and the estimated quantity required. These cards are fed through tabulating machines which give 80 lines of part numbers and other details every minute.
"Map Reference" for Parts If a particular part -number is ordered, a card is selected to represent this item on the dealer's invoice, the price for it and the quantity required. It is also punched with the " map reference" of the part. One, copy of the invoice goes to the depot, so that an operative can " pick " the parts required, the second is kept by the company as a record and the third copy goes to the dealer as an advice note.' In the depot the various parts required are rapidly picked and put into a large carton, loaded on to a trolley and attached to the Towveyor, which takes it to the dispatch section.
At 39, Mr. I. Read, manager of the parts division, is the youngest man in the company in such a capacity. He was the leader of a four-man group of Ford executives who visited the United States in 1954 to study American practice in the field of material handling and stores.