Modexpress receives, stores and ships goods for major fashion and lifestyle brands. They offer full supply chain fulfillment on a worldwide scale. Well-known brands that use their services include Suitsupply and Scapino. They also help SMEs that are in the market for expanding or outsourcing their business activities. Modexpress mainly works with traditional retail and e-commerce companies. How do supply chain providers deal with digitization, changing client demands, while also continuing to deliver the same high-quality service? We talked to Pieter van der Vorst, HR Manager at Modexpress, about sustainable employability.
Service and commitment
“Modexpress was founded in 1996, under the name ‘FashionWheels’. Following a merger and name change in 2013, we became fully independent again in 2017. In 2018, we rebranded ourselves Modexpress,” says Pieter. More than 25 years after its founding, Modexpress now has six locations, 500 employees and 150 clients worldwide. Some 80% of their clients operate in the retail and e-commerce industries. Their strategy is to be an engaged partner for ambitious clients and to be committed to all their employees. “To achieve these goals, we are proactive and see challenges as opportunities. We get results not only by showing guts, but also, above all, by just doing.”
Pieter talks about the new developments within their organization with great enthusiasm: “We are currently building a brand-new, largely automated warehouse in Helmond. Our aim is to grow along with the demand in the market: delivering packages, and thus the associated processes, always needs to be done faster and faster. To achieve this speed, we work five to six days a week and automate as many processes as we can. Still, if we want to continue to offer professionalized services, some of the work will continue to be manual.”
When it comes to transportation, hanging garments is one of Modexpress’ specialties. You can probably imagine how this takes up more space than folded garments in boxes. To transport hanging clothes neatly, they work with adapted trucks that are specifically designed for this purpose. Modexpress is pretty much the only Dutch provider to offer transportation of hanging clothes in this way. In addition, they offer their clients customization rather than just the standard processes. “We also offer an in-house dry-cleaning service and can attach price tags to clothes as well. This is how we make a difference for our clients.”
Creating schedules in less than half the time
Creating schedules for six sites, 500 employees and 150 clients may seem like a tall order, but for Modexpress, this ain’t their first rodeo, as it were. “There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Since March 2020, Dyflexis has been a welcome replacement for our old method of scheduling and recording hours. With this system, we can do our work faster and better than before.”
“Since we started working with Dyflexis, we only have two part-time planners: they do this together and their jobs amount to 1.6 FTE. This saves us more than half the time!”
“Previously, we used to receive our orders shortly in advance. These numbers were often incorrect or the shipping date was wrong, making it difficult to decide on accurate staffing levels. In addition, we only had a timekeeping system and six part-time planners, 4 FTEs in total. Since we started working with Dyflexis, we only have two part-time planners, they do this together and their jobs amount to 1.6 FTE. This saves us more than half the time! These planners work at our two main locations in Helmond, where we employ 130 to 140 people. They also make the schedules for the two smaller sites with up to 30 employees. At our site in Alphen aan den Rijn, the supervisor does the planning.”
“Several staffing agencies easily schedule their people at Modexpress themselves, using Dyflexis.”
Asked how easy it is to schedule remotely for multiple sites, Pieter says, “It’s easy as pie. We also work with several staffing agencies to fill all the shifts. Each of these agencies is assigned a separate department in our system, so they can easily schedule their own people. Just like our employees, these temporary workers use the Dyflexis app for their work schedule.”
Good for clients and employees
“Dyflexis is a nice fit with how we interact internally. We really value sustainable employability. It is important that everyone goes to work with a spring in their step, and a good work-life balance helps in that sense.” The software features make it even easier for planners to make sure warehouse employees get enough rest between shifts: they automatically receive a notification if their planning conflicts with laws and regulations. In the app, employees can instantly see how many hours they have worked, how much leave they have left and what their time-for-time balance is. “Since we mainly work with standard schedules, people always know where they stand. We do ask everyone to work weekends once every four weeks, however.”
“Thanks to Dyflexis, we are improving our operations internally as well as externally.”
“At first, we only used historical data from previous years to make predictions about how busy things might get. Today, we use the Dyflexis link with our BI Tool so we can work as efficiently as possible.” All the information available in the daily report is useful for steering business operations. Pieter: “This means we can also save on personnel costs. Good forecasting and planning are essential if you want to work flexibly and efficiently. Now we always have sufficient people present on the floor, which is great for us but also for our clients. Thanks to Dyflexis, we are improving our operations internally as well as externally.”
Realizing ambitions with Dyflexis
External factors that strongly influence Modexpress include the economy, social developments and, of course, the season. Their e-commerce arm is growing ever bigger. To grow along with this digital evolution, they are setting up the infrastructure for their new building to facilitate receiving, storing and processing goods for e-commerce and retail. “Our focus is now mainly on working more efficiently through automation, so we can increase our hourly package capacity! At the same time, we are letting go of our least efficient building, to create space to be more client-focused. We are also centralizing the processing of all hanging garments, which we only do at our main site. The Dutch market is pretty saturated. Our next step is to become even bigger abroad. We can realize this ambition faster with our more efficient working methods, thanks in part to Dyflexis.”
“We are very satisfied with Dyflexis. Timesheets are transparent not only to us, but also to our clients, who want to see an overview of hours worked per activity. With Dyflexis’ time registration, we can offer our clients a substantiated account of hours and prices. In turn, this contributes to our strategy of being a transparent and committed partner for all our clients.”
