Tesco awards maintenance contract to KOHLER Uninterruptible Power
Tesco PLC has awarded the contract to maintain its uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) at its nationwide distribution centres to KOHLER Uninterruptible Power (KUP).
Power consumption is rising rapidly, driven indirectly by legislation enacted to promote improvements of corporate accountability, and by UK public bodies fulfilling expectations to provide an ever increasing number of IT services 24 hours per day with little or no down-time.
Ruth Salter, Corporate Purchasing and Buying Manager at Tesco PLC says, “It is vital that the data centres that support the Tesco goods distribution network are one hundred percent operational 24/7. I can think of no area that’s more business-critical, so the preventive maintenance of our systems is of paramount importance.”
Tesco has 32 distributions centres nationwide, replenishing the shelves of nearly 2000 stores ready to meet the daily demand from its customers explains Salter. “For our stores to be supplied with goods on schedule we cannot afford for distribution management systems to be unavailable.
“KUP was the outstanding candidate and knowing that this aspect of the company’s critical business is in their reliable hands ensures peace of mind.”
Ruth Salter, Corporate Purchasing and Buying Manager at Tesco PLC
“Put simply, a UPS provides a critical function.”
David Renton, KUP Managing Director
Salter says that Tesco regularly reviews and seeks to maximise the quality of the services provided by outside contractors. “In this case, the ability to provide all of the services at every one of our distribution centres, on-schedule and on-budget was paramount. KUP was the outstanding candidate and knowing that this aspect of the company’s critical business is in their reliable hands ensures peace of mind.
KUP Managing Director David Renton says that companies like Tesco recognise that UPS maintenance is key to ensuring maximum availability of computer systems and communications equipment. “The cost of power failures could be severe both financially and operationally – for example lost revenue, employee and fleet downtime, and corrupted, lost or unavailable data. Put simply, a UPS provides a critical function so it would be very risky to put it all in place and then forget about it. Preventive maintenance means that companies have the reassurance that the UPS will perform to requirements and keep business systems running.”
Preventive maintenance enables KUP engineers to check system calibrations, evaluate operating conditions, ensure that components are working and to assess the optimum time for their replacement. “Too early is costly, but too late means risking load damage. When a UPS is protecting a mission critical load it is better to replace batteries six months too early than a day too late,” comments Renton.
According to Salter, ranking high on Tesco’s list of attributes for maintenance service providers are an established Health and Safety culture and practitioners of best practices in all relevant areas.
KUP has been able to meet all of Tesco’s service requirements, confirms Renton. “All of our procedures – installation, commissioning, maintenance and right-sizing – are well-documented, safe and of consistently high standard. Our quality assurance systems are ISO 9001 certified. We have also achieved ISO14001 and OHSAS18001 certification which help to support Tesco’s policies on the environment and health & safety.”
Further information
For further information contact Graham Fullick at KOHLER Uninterruptible Power.
