Trust. It’s hard won and easily lost. When you start dealing with a new business partner it can take years for them to understand your industry and to integrate with your processes.
With many of our customers we began our relationship with transactions. They bought materials, we delivered them. As they moved to trust us, they purchased more and more materials and started to build up to some of our more complex solutions such as kitting services or long-horizon planning. The products still arrived, but they were packaged to their needs and there were no missing pieces (the more you plan, the better the solution!).
This building to mutual trust is only the beginning. Our Supply Chain Solutions can deliver excellent results, but as they’re outside the normal ‘buy/sell’ relationship, it can be daunting. But by coaching our customers through the process of improvement - and even undertaking diagnostic events in their facilities - we demonstrated a deep understanding of supply chains in the railway, and how we can smooth the peaks and troughs.
As we build our relationships, so the benefits of closer working and tailored solutions deliver more and more benefits:
- Optimised costs - making sure that when you spend, you spend on value-added solutions
- Reduced Risk - the potential for costly overruns, cancelled projects or delayed trains reduce with increased collaboration
- Improved Performance - your projects run smoother, with all materials just where and when they need to be
Trust can only be built on evidence. Evidence of your own experience, but also of the experience of others. That’s why we’re proud of our relationships with Atkins, Porterbrook and First Group, where we have worked together under our ISO 44001 certification to enable them to qualify for the British Standard.
If they can do it with Unipart Rail, you can too.
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