Quiet Delivery System Enables Late-Night Deliveries, Huge Savings & Community Benefits
The Challenge
When Morrisons bought out Safeway’s, many of their newly acquired stores had service yards relatively close to dwellings. As a result, they would not be able to make deliveries to these stores during the night without disturbing nearby residents. This was a significant setback, because Morrisons logistics were optimized to make deliveries at the right time of the day or night to supply fresh produce for their customers, increase efficiency, and to reduce their environmental impact of deliveries (e.g. by avoiding congestion, etc.).
Our Work
We worked closely with Morrisons to establish how deliveries could be made during the night without disrupting residents. We identified that by reducing the delivery noise levels by 10dBA, this would reduce the exclusion distance from the service yard by two thirds, enabling night time deliveries at many more stores.
To develop the best possible solution, we conducted significant research and worked with Morrisons personnel to more accurately measure the noise associated with delivery activities and identify alternative ways it could be reduced.
The Result
Together, we developed the Morrisons Quiet Delivery System (QDS) which achieved the goal we had set ourselves of a 10dBA reduction.
Whilst this work was underway a Government backed scheme in conjunction with the Noise Abatement Society, Freight Transport Association and several of the major food retailers was also developed. This Quiet Deliveries Demonstration Scheme (QDDS) shares many of Morrisons QDS features and is recognised and supported by the relevant authoritative bodies, intended to enable deliveries to be made to foodstores when they would not otherwise be appropriate, providing the benefits to customers and the wider community together with the efficiencies and saving that are necessary for the food retailers to be able to provide the best produce and most competitive prices for their customers.