20 March

New L&R Logistics Hub: "An investment for our customers"

The Corona pandemic and the Ukraine war have had a number of negative consequences in recent years and months - including supply disruptions in many sectors and for many manufacturers and distributors. L&R and the medical device industry were not immune to this. L&R has recently been able to significantly and steadily improve its delivery service. But L&R is not satisfied with that - and is taking further, important steps: L&R invests in a new logistics hub in Poland to improve its own delivery service and thus increase delivery reliability.

The editors of "das magazin" asked Thomas Menitz, COO of L&R, for an interview.

das magazin: Mr Menitz: As COO, you are responsible for the entire supply chain at L&R. How difficult have the last 3 years been for you?

Thomas Menitz: As a partner and solution provider for healthcare systems, our customers and patients, we have naturally focused all our efforts on minimising the impact of the Corona pandemic and the Ukraine war in recent months and years. Nevertheless, there were supply disruptions - due to the lockdowns in the Far East, export stops in entire countries, destroyed transport routes, immensely increased transport costs, etc. We know how important a fast, reliable delivery service is for our customers and their work. Delayed or incomplete deliveries are not pleasant for our customers, and of course it was and is very, very stressful for me and all our staff.



das magazin: How does L&R deal with such a difficult situation?

Thomas Menitz: All our employees and all departments or teams - whether from logistics, sales, customer service, or production, etc. -  have shown special cohesion and great commitment in the last difficult years - for the benefit of our customers! Recently, thanks to our great team, we have been able to improve the situation significantly and steadily. This is something we can all be very proud of. It is not only our claim to be a customer-oriented, learning and agile organisation, but we are. We quickly understood the feedback from our customers and took important steps, and then made early and fast decisions to make further investments to improve our delivery capabilities. As a customer-focused, learning and flexible organisation, we aim to provide the best possible delivery service with maximum risk minimisation for our customers. Our approach is 'multi-pronged' and builds on several measures. For example, we have significantly increased our stock levels, provided additional storage space and implemented further redundancies in warehouse and distribution logistics.

das magazin: What other measures are you implementing?

Thomas Menitz:As a growing company, we naturally analysed our logistics network in detail some time ago and drew up plans for expansion. This is of course also in line with our corporate strategy SUCCESS+2030. We have therefore decided to expand our logistics network and have now invested strongly in a new logistics hub in Poznan / Poland. This new logistics centre will supply the Polish market from the second quarter and from the third quarter of 2023 it will also supply customers in Germany and possibly other markets in the future. The new logistics centre will relieve the pressure on our other logistics hubs, especially the one in Neuwied-Block. This means that not only our customers in Poland and Germany will benefit, but also those in other countries. This will help us to avoid delivery backlogs in the future. And: We will not only be able to raise our delivery service to the usual high level, but we will also be able to increase it and thus offer greater delivery reliability. This is an enormous gain for the entire L&R Group and we can fulfil our role as a reliable solution provider even better. This is an investment for our customers!
 



das magazin: What are the dimensions of the new logistics centre?

Thomas Menitz: The new logistics centre in Poznan covers almost 9,000 m² and has 4,000 pallet spaces and 1,000 shelf spaces. And: we are and will remain flexible: because the logistics centre can be expanded several times over if necessary. We have already acquired the neighbouring property needed for this and further expansion is in preparation. I am also very pleased that we have been able to recruit the first 20 new employees to work in the new logistics hub and in the Supply Network Operations Team in Poland. With Neuwied-Block (GER), Schönau a. d. Triesting (AUT) and Saint-Nabord (FRA), L&R now has three large logistics hubs in Europe. I am glad that the now expanded L&R logistics infrastructure will provide additional substantial support for our work and commitment – and that our team and our performance will thus become even stronger!"

das magazin: Mr Menitz, thank you for the interview!