A belated Happy New Year!  Sadly, the Christmas holidays seem a distant memory already, but to be honest it’s not our New Year which has been occupying my thoughts this week but the Chinese New Year coming up at the end of the month.

Factories in China have already closed and won’t reopen again for almost a month so any business like ours which imports even a portion of its stock from the Far East needs to be prepared for the potential disruption.

After so many years, the demand planning team at Mila are experts at managing this of course and we had previously ordered an additional 38% of stock which will take us seamlessly through until we enter the Year of the Dragon on the 23rd of January.

What is perhaps more impressive though is how the team have handled a 25% increase in sales of some of our core products over the last two months.  Various issues in the market mean that we’ve seen a seen a real surge in demand for iDeal flag hinges, composite door hinges, cylinders and mushroom Espags since November and we’ve been able to respond successfully and ensure that customers are not let down.

Just as important, we’ve delivered all this extra stock without any deterioration in service levels and our OTIF figure remains at over 98%.

With such a large portion of our products being manufactured overseas, extra stock can take weeks to reach us by ship so managing a 25% increase in demand without sacrificing service or delivery levels is quite an achievement.

Apparently, in Chinese astrology, Dragons symbolise ambition, drive, and a willingness to face challenges.   At the moment, I think that seems pretty appropriate.

Richard