Walkers Crisps have a limited distribution and these are: huge supermarkets, Local grocery stores, vending machines

and schools (in some schools). To really hit the jackpot Walkers Crisps has to expand its Limited Distribution channel and make their products available in post offices, every school, vending machines in every company etcetera. To handle this with really smart think they need to place the crisps on the middle shelve, scientist have proven that a customers attention always goes to the middle shelve, and is in reach of the hand very easily. They dont have to bend nor stand on their toes to reach a certain type of product.

Diamond uses outside shipping companies so they do not have to depend on grocery store logistics to sell their products. We believe that is a benefit and gives the company more power over its distribution network Diamond Foods, Inc. distributes their products in North America as well as overseas in England. They use their own distribution facilities across the United States, including set ups in Alabama, California, Indiana, Oregon and Wisconsin. Additionally, in California, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, New Jersey, Oregon and Wisconsin they use separate leased warehouse and distribution facilities. Also they have their own facilities as well as leased facilities that they use in Canada and Snetterton, England. They market directly to a variety of retail outlets. Mainly they distribute to national grocery stores, mass merchandisers, clubs, convenience stores and drug stores. When products get shipped from Diamond facilities they are usually carried by contract and common carriers, not their own trucks. As far as in store placement is concerned Diamond designs displays and they tend to place these set ups in multiple locations throughout each store. With this type of placement they hope to increase impulse purchase opportunities.

DMND markets consumer products through sales personnel directly to large national grocery, mass merchandiser, club, convenience stores and drug store chains. The sales department also oversees their broker and distributor network. DMND consolidated their brokerage network into one national broker in 2010. The distributor network carries Kettle brand potato chips to grocery, convenience and natural food stores in various parts of the United States. DMND distributes products from production facilities in Alabama, California, Indiana, Oregon, Wisconsin, and Norwich, England, and from leased warehouse and distribution facilities in California, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, New Jersey, Oregon, Wisconsin, Canada and Snetterton, England. Sales administration and logistics departments manage the administration and fulfillment of customer orders. The majority of products are shipped from production, warehouse and distribution facilities by contract and common carriers.

We make Potato Heads, which are lower in fat and have no artificial flavours or preservatives and are aimed primarily at mums. Were also in the process of re-launching low-fat Walkers Lights, complete with a new spelling, he said. All of Walkers products use the best possible ingredients and additives; the company is moving on from using palm oil to Sunseed (sunflower) for frying. Sunseed is one of the healthiest oils there is higher in mono-unsaturates even than olive oil. Baked Walkers, a baked rather than fried crisp, will extend the health concept further but traditional fried crisps are still among the most popular snacks in the country and around the world. As well as the different flavours, they come in different sizes, from the regular snack pack, through grab bags and onto multipacks, in sixes, 14s and even 26-pack sizes. Manufacturers would, ideally, want to make one SKU (stock keeping unit), which would bring huge benefits of scale but our customers want to differentiate, for competitive advantage, said Paul Campbell, vice-president of manufacturing. How we reconcile those two leveraging scale against customer-focused bespoke activity is critical. Walkers customers are

wholesalers, supermarkets and other retailers. If one of our customers were to take a nine-pack of Wotsits, rather than the standard six-pack, the nine-pack could attract the customer to visit and they may buy the rest of their groceries at the same time. But the bespoke pack represents another SKU, more raw material, more inventory and more changeover to us. Our challenge is to meet customer demand without increasing price. The Leicester site clearly benefited from major capital commitment when it first opened, and the investment habit has been maintained: the company is in the process of a 12 million ?project to expand its warehouse facilities and improve production. Weve extended our southern distribution centre at Leicester by 10,000 pallet spaces, bringing it up to a total of 35,000, said supply chain and logistics director Gary Horsfield. Standard boxes and pallets are moved through the highly-automated warehouse with human intervention only by exception. Some customers dont want a full pallet, and some want a mix, so we have people breaking pallet loads down and rebuilding. Retailers biggest costs are incurred in the last 50 yards; crisp packets are light but irregularly shaped and not suitable for cardboard boxes that double as display units. Walkers has been working on this problem. Weve just changed our six-pack boxes to make them easier to stack, said Horsfield. You get a lot of six-packs within each box: now, we pack them with a band that goes around, like a belt, and that allows the stacker to lift them out in one go. They simply pull the band out when the bags are on the shelf. As well as helping the customer cut costs in-store, he and his team are actively engaged in reducing supply chain costs further. Its about joined-up forecasting, getting closer to the demand signal and reducing stock in the customers supply chain. We are product captains with some customers: that means were responsible for the whole bagged snacks portfolio, for making sure the mix is right and the shelves are stocked. All the work Walkers is doing to reduce customers costs and help them to differentiate has an impact. As Campbell said, a different multipack affects raw materials and packaging; the band that wraps round the multipack makes things easier for the customers stackers but its extra material and activity for Walkers. It has to work on all its own costs: labour, raw materials, inventory and processes. Continuous improvement is a philosophy within the company: we have a continuous drive to deliver productivity, based on volume and cost, said Campbell. Were constantly looking to improve yield and cut waste from our raw materials, including potato peelings. We look to deliver productivity improvements every year, through different initiatives. We have performance team meetings with our employees every month; we use them to feed back information on how different groups and shifts are performing, and to address specific problems within the factory. Each employee sits down in their respective teams to be part of that process. Front-line operators and managers are constantly looking for ways of improving our performance, he said.

We have around 800 permanent staff, with up to 400 agency, on the manufacturing side, said Needham. The factories are highly automated: our people are engaged primarily in monitoring machine operations, changing pack film reels, changing flavours and checking quality. When ingredients arrive just-in-time potatoes fresh from the fields in the peak season, from March to October, and from environmentally-controlled storage for the rest of the year they are flumed, or floated, out of the trucks by water jets. Its important they be handled gently, because bruised potatoes make brown crisps an unacceptable quality breach. Theyre peeled, sliced and transported to the fryer, and then have flavours added in a rotating drum: they actually fall through the flavouring, rather than being sprayed. Cooking oil is stored in tanks on-site. Maize flour, for the extruded snacks, arrives in one-tonne bags and is fed directly into the extruder. Its difficult to predict precisely what demand is going to be, given trade decisions around promotions, he said. We try to work to a weekly schedule but we can be required to make changes on a day-to-day basis. Our overall stockholding even with our expanded warehouse is only five days, depending on the variety of crisps: some are only two days. Logistics and ERP (employee risk protection) management is undertaken from head office, in Theale, near Reading: planning and forecasting is interpreted into production runs by local schedulers. To support this, Walkers has invested in a set of integrated IT solutions that enable plann-ing and execution of the manufacturing and logistics processes. Our overarching desire and requirement is to find more cost-effective ways of producing, he said. Commodity prices have been increasing, Sunseed oil is more expensive than palm oil, and wage inflation is a constant. A lot of our low-hanging fruit has gone so cost controls and the desire to grow is more challenging. We have achieved significant successes through automation and weve made progress on reducing our environmental impact: were setting the benchmark globally for water consumption in crisp production, where weve taken 50 per cent of usage out in the past five years. That gives us both a cost and environmental benefit. Similarly, weve seen reduction in energy usage of between 15 and 18 per cent, through a combination of investing in more efficient motors and the monitoring and targeting of all utilities, this linked to the effective recovery of water and re-use. The company has also worked on taking peelings and waste starch out and, where it previously mainly disposed of it as animal feed, it has converted it to a highergrade product which delivers financial benefits. But, Campbell makes clear, its the employees involvement that has made the biggest difference in delivering this sustainability. For eight years, weve had a significant effort to engage our front-line employees to drive performance through our factories, he said. Weve invested in training, covering problemsolving and improvement as well as skills. Weve introduced suites of controls and change developments to support those efforts and help our people to own and drive their own performance. As well as helping to better its effectiveness, training helps to make the company an employer of choice, as demonstrated by a reduced level of staff turnover. Driving improvement is fundamental, and the key to unlocking our potential is our front-line managers and staff. If our people can make a one per cent improvement on 50 million packs a week, the impact is significant.