STEVE HARRIS
DEPUTY LOGISTICS DIRECTOR
Steve's career in the newstrade industry spans over twenty years and he has been involved with Marketforce since its inception. His role involves managing the Supply Chain to ensure that our product gets to market in the most timely, cost efficient and effective way.
The Planning section is responsible for the maintenance of a bespoke system (PALM) that produces all the relevant despatch information to enable effective and efficient collection, and ultimately, delivery to all relevant destinations. This information includes details of any required regionalisation, the make up of the product, including gifts, paper weights and pagination, as well as individual Wholesale, Freight Forwarders and Overseas Agent orders. Timely sending of this information to Printers, Outworkers, Carriers and Freight Forwarders is critical, as non-receipt at the appropriate time will result in On Sale lateness.
The Issue Control and Traffic section is responsible for checking the Supply Chain plan, as produced by the Planning section and for making the necessary decisions if the title is running late to ensure the On Sale date can be met. This involves liaison with Clients, Carriers, Printers and Outworkers and various internal and external areas, ensuring minimising cost is at the forefront of all approaches.
The Freight Forwarding section is charged with ensuring that our product moves in the most cost effective and efficient manner from the UK to Overseas markets by road, sea or air, and manages Freight Forwarders to meet this requirement. Furthermore, continual monitoring of current International Supply Chains is carried out here to ensure we meet the correct On Sale dates in the appropriate countries. The Logistics Development area looks at ways of improvng the Supply Chain in a medium to long term basis, both in terms of efficiency and cost while the Information and Development Team provide all the necessary Management Information Systems both internally and externally to enable the business to function properly as well as having responsibility for specialist Partwork product and TV listings Christmas issues.
Steve comments: "I'm never bored in this role, I never know what I'll be facing each day due to an ever-changing high pressure environment. However despite these pressures, we still manage to maintain our market leading operational, logistical and distribution services. As a team we are at the forefront in terms of IT and supply chain management. Wholesalers tell us we are ahead of the competition and that's their words not mine!"