As part of a strategic change to its supply chain, M&S was invested in a new combined National Distribution and E-Commerce Distribution Centre at Castle Donington, Leicestershire.

Designed to provide M&S with much greater flexibility to meet its customer requirements, whilst minimising operating costs, the facility was developed using a suite of Saker Solutions' simulation models to assess how the various systems within the centre will perform under different control rules and demand profiles.

The models allowed M&S to understand how a vast range of operations covering receipt, storage, order picking, collations, packaging and dispatch would perform both individually and holistically, enabling the design of the facility to run optimally, and M&S to operate with much greater flexibility, whilst minimising operating costs, and to adapt to meet the demanding requirements of the company's dynamic market place.