MHD MATERIALS HANDLING
OPTIMISING THE WAREHOUSE FLOOR Combilift’s Managing Director Martin McVicar and Country Manager Australia Chris Littlewood explain how Combilift helps customers design and optimise their warehouses around individual needs and unique equipment requirements.
“C
ombilift manufactures forklift trucks, but the reality is that what we are really offering customers are warehouse solutions,” says Martin McVicar, Managing Director of Combilift. Martin and the Combilift team are renowned for their materials handling machines, but Martin says their real business is warehouse optimisation – because for a forklift or other materials handling machine to be effective it must be conceptualised in the context in which it is actually deployed. “It’s not enough to simply create a great machine without considering the warehouse operation that surrounds it,” he says. “That’s why for more than a decade Combilift has offered clients free warehouse design plans; because it’s no use selling a product that is great on paper and great when considered in isolation – but that doesn’t integrate seamlessly with its surroundings. It wouldn’t be good for the customer, and it wouldn’t be good for us. So, we don’t think of ourselves as just a manufacturer – we want to help customers optimise their warehouse with an effective warehouse plan that complements and makes the most of our industry-leading materials handling machines.” Although Martin and the Combilift team have been offering free warehouse designs to customers for more than a decade, he is more enthusiastic today than ever to get the word out to customers – because recent trends affecting warehouse operations make a consideration of holistic warehouse design a paramount concern. “Optimising the warehouse space has always been one of our foremost concerns,” Martin says. “But with the twin challenges of the rapid rise in e-commerce in wake of the pandemic
Martin McVicar, Managing Director of Combilift. plus the imperative of organisations reducing their carbon footprints – we think it especially important that we help our customers as much as possible with assessments of their warehouse operations and new designs for optimisation where we see challenges and opportunities.” While every warehouse is different, e-commerce and climate change are challenges that affect everyone around the globe – whether in developed or developing markets. With respect to e-commerce, Martin points out that 2019 projections for the growth of e-commerce saw it doubling in about a decade, but that with the pandemic that doubling almost occurred within one year. “That really put a lot of constraints on warehouse space, both because of the radical change in the nature of fulfilment from in-store to online and because of the necessity to reconfigure worker movement on the warehouse floor to ensure COVID-safety
compliance,” he says. “At Combilift we have a team of nine warehouse engineers that offer free warehouse plans to customers all around the world. So, we’re ready to go in terms of helping businesses meet these new challenges. And the reason we offer this service free of charge is because we’re confident that if we bring a solution to our customers, that will engender a sense of trust and respect in us for the long term. If we weren’t bringing them a solution, then it shows we weren’t bringing them value. But we’re pretty happy with our track record so far and want to extend this value-add to more and more of our customers.” Martin adds that it doesn’t matter how big or small the customer is – Combilift is ready and willing to help out everyone with their warehouse optimisation strategy. It’s a point seconded by Chris Littlewood, Country Manager Australia for Combilift. “We don’t worry about what size of warehouse we’re dealing with,” Chris MHD MARCH 2022 | 35
