Prince William Pottery
Background
Established in 1937 by Ray Sanders, Prince William Pottery is a successful family-run business that delivers a wide range of ceramic promotional mugs in a variety of colours.
The company name originated from its early address on Prince William Street in Liverpool, before relocating to Edge Lane and was initially a distribution business for wholesale glass and china.
The company has continually invested in new, state-of-the-art machinery to improve the quality of products, match customer requirements and remain a competitive business. Their machinery can print high volumes of promotional mugs using either dye sublimation or screen-printing techniques, opening up new markets and promotional opportunities in the UK and overseas markets.
In 2020 the company built further warehousing to maintain large stocks of promotional mugs, enabling faster delivery times.
Challenge
Following an introduction to the Horizons team at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), a consultative support process combining digital diagnostics and readiness level assessment resulted in a support opportunity centring on a digital demonstrator linking to Stock Management.
Solution
Prince William Pottery imports tens of thousands of blank mugs from overseas suppliers. The company wanted to convert the current paper-to-digital-based stock management system to streamline and improve the stock management processes. This would include the daily stock intake, work in progress and monthly outputs. The Horizons teams examined the current process to find where potential for improvement could lay and then investigated available options for the company, matching their needs.
Impact
Following the research findings and recommendations made by the experts at Horizon’s LJMU team, Prince William Pottery took advantage of an initial digital stock management demonstrator, using this to support their application for a Horizons-supported grant which would de-risk capital investment relating to a start-up pack of asset management hardware with integrated software.
Prince William Pottery has now provided its teams with handheld computer barcode scanners and has developed two databases for better collating product data including product location (zonal, shelving or racking) and product type (SKU, product description, location, quantity and cost) so that stock can be tracked in a logical and efficient manner.
Once the new system was launched, a full stock take was actioned by scanning SKU, location and quantity of product lines which was then uploaded into the database to ensure an accurate snapshot of stock was digitally available, improving understanding and trust in the system with the team and as transactions took place, all moving items were accurately recorded.
The support provided by Horizons has helped Prince William Pottery to introduce a new digital asset management system which has led to improved productivity by approximately 30% which offers the company a significantly shorter lead time, improving customer service rates and even presents new market opportunities.
The initial asset management system design has been based around an initial starter pack with basic functions to manage stock and aid regular monthly stock-take activities. The time to accurately deliver their products has reduced from a single day to just two or three hours. The Horizons teams also demonstrated future optional upgrades to the starter pack which can become integrated into their office software accounting systems, enhancing further systems and operations in the future.
“Our partnership with Horizons has been a real eye-opener and has given us the means to introduce a new digital process which significantly improved the ability to track and manage stock internally within the company and externally to our customers, improving sales growth and customer service levels.
I would recommend anyone managing large levels of stock to take advantage of what it has to offer.”
Peter Sanders Director of Ray Sanders Ltd (Prince William Pottery)