The organisation that I have decided to use for this part of my assignment will be Tomlinson’s Dairies. Tomlinson’s Dairies are a milk processing firm that have their own 70,00 sq. ft. farm located in Coedpoeth, Wales and are very proud disburses of welsh milk and cream that specialize in supplying their products to a wide range of customers all across wales.
At Tomlinson’s Dairies they have recently started to associate themselves with local welsh farmers that supply them with milk as well as farming their own milk from theirs own cows. As they only distribute their products to retailers and organisations across Wales their distribution system used is fairly simple and direct which shows how small of a firm they are. The transport methods that are used by Tomlinson’s for receiving milk from local farmers are refrigerated tankers that travel by road and as they are delivering from local farms they don’t have long to travel to Tomlinson’s Dairy farm. The transport methods used by Tomlinson’s to deliver their milk and cream are refrigerated trucks which deliver their goods across wales to different schools, hospitals, Asda supermarkets, Costa coffee cafés and small and large retailers.
The refrigerated trucks that Tomlinson’s uses are theirs that they have purchased themselves; this is more beneficial in the long run for them than hiring independent distributors every time a delivery needs to be made, which is every day as they will charge high rates which in the long run will end up more expensive than buying the trucks, hiring staff and paying for the fuel costs themselves, in these terms Tomlinson’s have done the right thing for lowering their costs in the long run. A better way which Tomlinson’s will be able to save money in the long run could be by purchasing and switching their old trucks with larger refrigerated trucks such as refrigerated 40ft containers as this will mean that they can fit more on the trucks and can deliver more an any point, altimetry leading to less trucks needed on the road which cuts down on fuel costs and staff costs as less employees will be needed due to having less trucks. This is a very expensive process to do and will only benefit Tomlinson’s if they wish to jeep expanding and stay open for a lot more years to come.
More on a positive note due to Tomlinson’s only operating and distributing in Wales, this helps then in maintain a good customer service and responding to the consumers’ needs and wants within the market quickly and without any troubles. As you can drive through the whole of wales in less than 4 hours deliveries are usually made on time which adds to customer satisfaction and will most likely use Tomlinson’s again. A method that Tomlinson’s could consider implementing to improve customer satisfaction on a much larger scale could be by doing home deliveries. For instance they could create a new scheme that entails of making home deliveries within a given radius nearby the location of their farm; therefor deliveries won’t be too far to travel to and with the implementation of new 40ft refrigerated containers home deliveries could be made on the way of making large deliveries to actual retailers that do business with Tomlinson’s or certain trucks could be provided for just home deliveries. The 40ft refrigerated containers will make the process easier but it will still be possible with the normal refrigerated trucks that they are using now.
Furthermore Tomlinson’s use local farmers to buy some milk from to help them with meeting the high demand levels which they do not house enough cows to do so themselves. This might make things simpler for Tomlinson’s however it is obvious that it raises their costs especially as they pay a little bit more to their farmers to ensure that they can farm in a sustainable way, this is their way of helping the local community which personally I think is the morally right thing to do and if it was me in their position I would keep it that way.