Our Year 11 Business students had a fantastic experience at the John Lewis Distribution Centre at Magna Park.
There are 820 partners working at the centre and it was interesting hearing more about the excellent employee benefits that John Lewis offers. Their commercial commitment is Happier People, Happier Business, Happier World, and we all saw evidence of how the organisation goes the extra mile in making its workforce feel valued, with wellbeing paramount, which has a direct positive impact on productivity.
The Centre is fully automated, and we were shown the different sections on the floor. We were able to see the journey of goods from the Receiving Area right through to Despatch and talk to the managers and workers involved at each station. The quickest time customers receive their order is four hours from placing it and the slowest is two days. The streamlined supply chain delivers both to stores and direct to the customer, with the Replenishment Department processing over 200,000 single unit items a day. This was an amazing opportunity for our students to see first-hand how a flagship company has embraced innovation and improved its business model. A student who attended said, “It was a very informative trip. It gave me an actual insight into the real-life working environment of an organisation.”
We have developed partnerships with other local organisations including NiftyLift and ABB Robotics, and we were able to see how their elevating work platforms and robots were used at Magna Park.
Categories: Careers Year 11