Impressions of a very interesting morning in the John Lewis warehouse

As part of the Logistics & Supply Chain programme we visited John Lewis’s warehouse in the Magna Park, strategically located just outside of Milton Keynes. This warehouse serves as national distribution centre and focusses half of its capacity to e-commerce.

After having managed the peaks of black Friday and Christmas the partners, the women and men working for John Lewis are surprisingly few in the over 1 million square feet of the warehouse.

Most memorable was probably the thought-through arrangement of each element in this warehouse and as we were shown by our knowledgeable guide, the easy seeming integration of humans in the automated systems was impressive and seamless. This ensures an outstanding quality whilst keeping up a high throughput rate.

Remains to say, we would have enjoyed a ride in one of the conveyor systems, but we had run out of time and would need to be able to fit in a tote bin; perhaps at the next opportunity.