The Client – respected drinks business logistics warehousing company
The LCB Vinotheque warehouse, part of the LCB Group, is a former grain warehouse or ‘maltings’ situated in the market town of Burton upon Trent.
Constructed during the heyday of the renowned local brewing industry, the warehouse has also served many other storage purposes over its long history. Today it provides temperature and humidity controlled storage for fine wine merchants and private collectors, and can hold over half a million bottles. From the cobbled main yard to its solid brick structure, the listed building is an impressive local landmark and heritage feature.
LCB Group is a drinks business logistics warehousing company, which offers a variety of drinks and beverages storage in facilities stretching from London to Scotland.
The Need – easy to use, reliable temperature monitoring system
With metre-thick, solid brick walls, the Vinotheque building was originally designed with temperature in mind and today provides an excellent temperature-controlled environment.
For LCB, temperature monitoring of client and customer goods is extremely important and the business aims to keep its promise of ensuring that the products it stores are in safe hands. To do this, it needs to guarantee that customer stock is kept to a temperature that’s unique when compared to most items stored within an air-controlled environment.
Stock cannot drop below a certain temperature or go above it – at all times there has to be exactly the correct balance to avoid loss or spoilage of product. Vinotheque therefore needed a temperature monitoring system that was easily accessible, easy to use and which would provide minute to minute updates to enable temperature checks against the required range.
The Solution – a Monika wireless system
LCB Vinotheque looked to Monika to provide them with such a system. Monika installed temperature sensors to each warehouse floor. The Monika system uses robust, self-healing ZigBee wireless connections to transmit real-time data from the sensors back to a central server, providing detailed insights for managers.
Darren Froggatt, Warehouse Co-ordinator, commented: “The installation was hassle free and the equipment provided was very discreet and of high quality. The software is very informative and well-illustrated with graphs and coloured sensor dials showing each probe or sensor by temperature and by zone.”
The Monika system works hand in hand with the warehouse’s air conditioning system. Darren explained: “The Monika system also provides us with alerts when there has been a change in environment, such as a drop or increase in temperature which then prompts us to survey the sector and discover the reason for the change. We can then correct the temperature with our state of the art internal air conditioning system. Without the two working in tandem the whole air conditioning system would falter.”
“Traditional thermometers situated around the warehouse would not have been accurate enough for our purposes and would additionally take employee time to check. Monika can give me the whole building temperatures from the comfort of my desk – within seconds and without the use of employee time and resources.”
The Outcome – safe and correct storage
Monika now provides annual engineer visits to site to maintain the temperature monitoring system through a service and calibration and is always on hand to respond to any problems that arise. Darren said: “Whether it’s a phone call or dropping an email to Monika, their response to attend is very prompt should there be a fault. The expert recalibrating of the system to ensure it hasn’t dropped out or lost any functionality is imperative as is our ongoing service contract.”
The LCB Vinotheque warehouse at Burton upon Trent is the storage facility of choice for thousands of customers, and has built a reputation on providing safe and correct storage. LCB is able to promote the benefit of the Monika system to customers, giving them peace of mind and even providing temperature data if required.
It has therefore helped LCB demonstrate its commitment and reliability to customers. Darren concluded: “Our good reputation for correct storage of goods travels around the industry and the Monika system is an important part of our story and success.”