Capacity struggles and how we're addressing them

The Problem

Simply put,  orders are through the roof. We are seeing more demand now than in the final weeks of the feed in tariff. While that's great news, it is far beyond the increase we had forecast, and with the added staffing pressures of track and trace pings hitting staff numbers (on top of holiday season) our operations are under pressure. We are also struggling for space. We have been doing our best to manage the supply chain problems and ensure a good stock holding across as many lines as possible so we can keep supplying customers, and this has meant that our stock holding has grown significantly - we have over 20,000 panels in stock, for instance, but that's less than 8 weeks worth.  We use third party storage too, but that means lots of trunking of stock between premises, which adds time and crowds our busy yard. Our warehouse team are working tirelessly, but trying to work safely under pressure in an overstuffed warehouse is challenging. 

What we're doing

We have trebled the number of lorry collections, taken on seven team members already and are in the process of adding a further six in logistics and four more in sales, operations and admin. Within this period, we have doubled the number of forklift trained operatives we have. We have added third party fulfilment this year on some lines, and are in the process of selecting an additional new warehouse (we only moved into our current distribution centre last September). 

But it takes time to recruit people, time to train them, and time for system improvements to become embedded. 

We really value every single order a customer places with us, so it really pains us to take this step in making our order cut off earlier in the day to 12pm. We will reverse the change as soon as we possibly can, while we catch up with capacity. 

We're really sorry for the inconvenience of all of the above, and the whole team are working hard to still process as many orders as we possibly can, without compromising either the service to our customers, or the welfare of our team. We'd like to thank those who keep their business with us for their ongoing patience and loyalty. 

All of the Midsummer team.