Cutting out the middle man
October 1st 2005

Mitsubishi Forklift Trucks has streamlined the way it gets its trucks to market in the UK, bringing about significant benefits for the end user. Charlotte Stonestreet reports

Firmly established as a significant presence in the UK forklift market, this year has seen radical changes for Mitsubishi Forklift Trucks and the way its equipment is supplied in Britain. In the past, Mitsubishi had sold its trucks to importer Hamech, which in turn distributed them to a network of dealers. Now, under the guidance of Terry Foreman, the company has done away with the services of Hamech and distributes directly to its dealers.

A full range supplier, Mitsubishi's equipment covers pallet trucks through to container handlers. A truly global player, it has manufacturing sites in the US, Japan and the Netherlands, enabling benefits from economies of scale. Unlike many of its competitors, the company is not involved in the retail side of the lift truck business, and uses only independent dealers to get its products to the end user. This, says Foreman, means that Mitsubishi gets to plough back more into R&D and its production facilities.

Commenting on Mitsubishi's performance in the UK, Foreman points out that the actual brand is very strong - indeed, a recent Benchmark survey found that 43% of customers would give their recommendation to a Mitsubishi product compared with around 20% elsewhere in the market - however, he feels that over the last few years the company has not really performed to its true abilities.

"The UK is strategically a very important market for Mitsubishi and there was a need to radically change the game plan,” he says.

Dealing direct

This change has come about with the restructure and now the independent dealers deal directly with the parent company’s European base at Almere in the Netherlands.

"In effect our dealers have gone from being second tier businesses to full partners," says Mike Jones, Mitsubishi Forklift Trucks UK’s Regional Manager.

"This gives better communications and enables us to be far more responsive to the market."

In line with the company’s ethos of ‘innovating globally...acting locally’ the dealers who sell Mitsubishi trucks have indepth knowledge of the local markets, with their different industries and cultures. Now, with the new structure in place, Mitsubishi’s energy can go into supporting its dealers in the UK.

Pivotal to the new way of working is a comprehensive online communications system. This gives real-time access to Mitsubishi’s DIP (dealer inventory pool) so dealers can establish truck availability and even give their customer a delivery date.

Previously this process would have been much more laborious, involving numerous faxes and opportunities for error. This feature alone has resulted in significantly reduced lead times for the end user.

The online system also incorporates a ‘configurator’, which automatically checks that any truck configuration selected is appropriate, eliminating the time and effort needed to sort out problems arising from options being chosen which are not available for the particular model ordered.

According to the company, some competitors may experience delays as long as two weeks between faxing an order and receiving a faxed conformation.

Real-time availability

Another major advantage of the new set-up is on the maintenance and service side.

Engineers can now access electronic manuals at any time and know that the information they have in front of the them is bang up to date. They are also provided with real-time information on parts availability and pricing.

All parts come directly from the company’s European Parts Centre in Belgium, which is reported to have availability of 97% plus. Orders for parts received by 16.00 are flown into Coventry Airport and delivered to the dealer, the service engineer or the end user by 07.00 the next day.

"With the new system we are empowering our dealers to be more efficient and provide better lead times, combined with competitive prices, to give a better service to their customers," says Jones.

Backing this up, Mike Chalmers, head of Mitsubishi dealer, Welfaux, says that the new system is "flexible and user-friendly - beneficial to dealer and customer". He cites that in the case of one of his customers, response times to equipment breakdowns have been reduced by around 32% thanks mainly to the quick availability of spare parts.

Under the new system, competitive pricing and increased efficiencies go hand in hand, something which will no doubt contribute to increased business for Mitsubishi in the UK.

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