Bridgestone has joined Goodyear Dunlop UK and Continental as the third tyremaker to use the shared-user facility operated by logistics provider Norbert Dentressangle Logistics (NDL) at the TyreFort facility in Birmingham, UK.
While Bridgestone will not use the facility for storage, as Goodyear Dunlop and Continental do, NDL will be providing crossdock operations at the facility for roughly one-fifth of Bridgestone medium to small deliveries coming from the company’s central distribution warehouse in Coventry, which NDL also operates.
Bridgestone tyres are brought by NDL into the facility, adjacent to Fort Dunlop, and cross-docked with Goodyear and Continental products for overnight delivery to dealers and distributors.
TyreFort was built when Goodyear and Dunlop merged in 2002 with capacity for a million tyres catering for both OEMs and the replacement market. But Goodyear Dunlop’s success in reducing inventory since then through better supply chain management, including direct shipments to OEMs from its manufacturing plants in Europe, meant the company only needed around a third of the space available.
When Continental decided to review its distribution operation in the UK Goodyear Dunlop approached NDL with a proposal for it to take over the management of the facility and open it up to other tyremakers.
The introduction of Bridgestone means further potential advantages in asset utilisation in terms of warehouse use fleet utilisation. NDL is also opening the space up for non-automotive logistics material to maximise the use of space.
Read more about Norbert Dentressangle's logistics support at TyreFort in the next edition of Automotive Logistics magazine (April-June 2010).
