The logistics centre of the Royal Dutch Air Force on Air Force base Woensdrecht provides the storage and distribution of spare parts for all flying material used by the Dutch defense units. At this moment, the Royal Air Force is working on the Hermes II project. The goal of this project is to centralize the stock of logistics centre Woensdrecht and two other bases into a new logistics centre located on Air Force base Woensdrecht.

The Royal Air Force used the methodology of Highly Competitive Warehouse Management to professionalize its management. Major Peter van Winkel, project manager Hermes II: ‘Thanks to the Maturity Scan that is part of Highly Competitive Warehouse Management we knew our position relative to best-in-class companies at the moment we started the project. That was quite a shock! We also knew what we had to do in order to improve our position relative to the others.

Dennis van Hattem, Manager Physical Distribution: ‘It is important to translate the mission of the organisation into realistic and manageable targets that everyone can understand. Highly Competitive Warehouse Management helped us to formulate a clear strategy along with a practical step-by-step plan to achieve the planned growth and change within our logistics centre.’

Major Van Winkel confirms the importance of this approach: ‘The ambitions of Logistics Centre Woensdrecht are high. We want to be an important player in the supply chains of the various weapon systems.’

He continues: ‘One of the most important activities was mapping of processes. By breaking down the processes into individual handling steps, we obtained insight into opportunities for improvement. Only at the level of handling steps, one can make proper decisions about combination, simplification, automation or elimination. An unexpected effect was that the discussion on handling steps made more sense to our employees than a discussion about processes. By speaking in the language of handling steps, we could exploit the experience of our workers. Actually, by doing so, we rediscovered our human capital.

His colleague Van Hattem lists the achievements in the first year: ‘By investing in transparency, elimination of non-value adding activities, a better utilisation of people and resources and collaboration in the supply chain, we are now working more clever and effective. This made us into a reliable link in the supply chain. The challenge is to become a best-in-class warehouse. To reach this goal, we still have a way to go. By applying Highly Competitive Warehouse Management and by creating a more positive working environment, in which we inspire our employees to join the process of change, we are ready for this challenge.’

The approach of Highly Competitive Warehouse Management resulted in smart solutions for warehouse management that enhanced productivity as well as throughput. This meant less space, less mechanization and less automation for the design of the new logistics centre of the Royal Air Force. It also meant that the costs for realising the new logistics centre were much lower and a flexible design emerged that allows the Air Force to respond easily to future developments in its supply chain.

Jeroen van den Berg Consulting assisted in project Hermes II. In addition, the team was supported by engineering firm Tebodin for the technical and constructional aspects.