DoorCo invests in Macclesfield hub

DoorCo has made significant upgrades to its Macclesfield warehouse, based at the company’s main site at Motorway House. Warehouse manager, Anthony Dunn, provides more insight into the investments.

I joined DoorCo at the back end of 2024 and was excited to get started with unlocking the potential of the warehouse and its team.

The team was already operating well, however, I identified a series of ways in which we could improve the organisation of the warehouse, elevate the facilities to enhance efficiency, as well as spotting key individuals who could be hugely impactful in tailored roles within the department.

The investments we have made have been focused on three areas: Health & Safety, Quality and Efficiency. We have installed new racking into a number of areas in the warehouse and implemented a new layout of the stock, all of which has been designed to make picks quicker, easier and fundamentally safer to complete.

The new layout reduces the crossover between pedestrians and working operatives to ensure the safety of all colleagues on-site. We are in the process of having new pedestrian walkways painted on to the floors to coincide with the new layout to ensure employees on foot and on FLTs can operate safely alongside each other.

We have also installed new lighting into the warehouse to create a brighter space. This investment aimed to not only make the environment a more pleasant workspace but also to improve visibility for our pickers to help them spot any visible defects in product quality before they leave our warehouse. Alongside lighting, one of our final investments into the facility will be a new heating system.

The welfare of our team is our number one priority and as with many warehouses, the temperatures in winter can get really cold and we hope that the new heating system will ensure the working environment is a much more pleasant space for our team during the colder months. Having the ability to control the temperature in our warehouse can also have a knock-on effect on limiting quality issues that can stem from weather and temperature.

Safety & quality first
You can have the best warehouse in the world but without the right team, you won’t reap the rewards. Over the last eight months, we have reorganised the workforce in the warehouse and created a supervisor hub with three key members of staff operating in one central area, ensuring the activity of the warehouse is right at their fingertips whilst also ensuring they’re visible to team members should they need them.

With a new leadership team in place for the warehouse, we set about changing the mindset in the team. We focused on the business’ values of ‘Innovation, Quality, Agility and People’ and ensured these core beliefs were at the centre of all new processes.

We have established a culture where quality truly matters to each individual and the products are treated as their own. We have also adopted an ethos of ‘safety first’ which has seen an increase in positive and negative incident reporting, better investigation and action taken for all incidents reported and a general downturn in incidents thanks the new layout and procedures put in place.

Over the last eight months, we have implemented a huge amount of change but also seen a huge amount of reinvigoration and buy-in from the team. We’re operating at high-levels of accuracy and efficiency with a team that is invested and committed.

As a business, we’re passionate about strategic investment into areas where we know the improvements will drive a better level of work as well as a better standard of workplace for our team – and the warehouse project has been a perfect example of this.