CEVA, one of the world's leading supply chain management companies, has won a major contract to operate a brand new national distribution centre on behalf of Caterpillar dealership Finning. The service partnership replaces an earlier Finning in-house operation based at five separate locations.

The new Finning National Distribution Centre houses all of the dealership's engines stock, plus 60,000 separate product lines, all of which are required for next day delivery to the company's 800 field engineers and 28 UK and Ireland branches.

CEVA designed the purpose-built £8m facility, and is providing 33 staff to operate it over extended business hours six days per week. Under the contract, CEVA has committed to next-day delivery of all orders, for an expected overall traffic of some 10,000 items per week.

The state-of-the-art building itself, situated on the Lakeside Estate at Cannock, Staffordshire, covers 120,000 sq ft and incorporates wide-aisle and cantilever racking, floor-level storage and a two tier mezzanine floor accommodating 90% of stock keeping units (SKUs). On the environmental front, it features energy-saving lighting, a biodiversity area and the first electric car charging points in the company. To facilitate business continuity, the Finning National Distribution Centre boasts a fire protection system incorporating 9.5km of pipework and over 3,000 sprinkler heads covering each level of racking.

Finning will operate Caterpillar's "Smart Sourcing" technology, which assists on-time delivery of parts to the customer's specific requirements; Finning UK and Ireland will be the first Caterpillar dealer in Europe to use the resource.

In preparation for the opening of the new distribution centre, CEVA successfully consolidated the stock from the five Finning parts operations into the new facility within five weeks, while maintaining full operational capability; the new centre was fully functional on time and on budget.