APOC Aviation CEO Max Lutje Wooldrik spent the day working in the company’s warehouse to better understand how its systems work and the challenges employees face.
The unorthodox approach not only offered a learning opportunity, but boosted the morale of the “unsung heroes” of the warehouse team.
The day was timed to coincide with recent and current teardown activity with many A320 and 737 components in the warehouse, as well as the ramping up of market activity, APOC said.
“I believe it is important for all of APOC’s employees to understand how our systems work. So starting with myself, everyone in sales, finance, technical and administration will spend a day working in the warehouse to understand how we organise the intake, examination, selection and dispatch of parts,” said Wooldrik.
“As a business we are very focused on new technologies and our benchmark component management system ‘Alicanto’ is the only programme in the world that updates stock live every five seconds – we all need to be on the ball, 24-7.”
APOC’s warehouse manager Sing Lo noted that the business was seeing a steady upturn in demand as airlines begin to increase flight frequency and aircraft are brought out of Covid-induced storage. “We’re shipping more larger items at the moment such as nacelles and landing gear. However, the fast-turn smaller components require just as much attention,” said Lo.
“The new warehouse in Rotterdam, combined with effective stock deployment to our hubs in Asia and North America means that not only precise control for APOC but also 100 per cent transparency of the whereabouts of all orders for our customers at any time has to be guaranteed. Enabling them to plan their MRO programmes with faster turn-around-times saves money and guarantees dispatch reliability.”
APOC’s vice president component sales Karim Grinate said it “was a surprise for us all” to see Wooldrik “packing parts and inspecting repairs”. Grinate added: “Sharing the working day was great for the morale of the warehouse team, who are often the unsung heroes in our business. I am on the fast-track learning curve next week – and much as we all think we know what the team does day to day, I am sure it will be an eye-opener.”
