President’s Reflections: Success, Succession and Leadership for the Future
A Look Back at 2011 Growth and Ahead to a Bright Future for Our Company and Industry
By Arthur Barrett, President,
In 2011, Barrett Distribution Centers celebrated its 70th anniversary with unprecedented growth, the best financial performance in our history and customer satisfaction scores at an all-time high.
We are providing customers a broader range of services, with transportation operations keeping pace with warehouse operations growth and customers increasingly turning to our information technology (IT) team for support and consulting service. The developers of our Synapse WMS have given us great support at every turn. As our IT team consistently exceeds customers’ expectations, our satisfied clients continue to expand their scope of work requests.
Because our management team has continuously developed their people, we were able to fill from within the company many key roles that emerged from our growth, such as the critical support functions in training, inventory control, new account implementation, and ISO. New members of our Operations teams have hit the ground running and quickly climbed the learning curve, allowing our training and implementation teams to move on quickly to the next new customer implementation.
For me personally, 2011 was also a year of growth and development. I had the good fortune of being re-elected to the Executive Committee of the International Warehouse Logistics Association (IWLA), the trade association of the third party logistics industry.
In 2012 I am Chairman of the IWLA Annual Convention in San Francisco March 18-20. I have had the pleasure of recruiting a tremendous cast of keynote speakers and industry experts who will share best practices with our delegates. I have enjoyed a very different experience of enrolling and inspiring a great team of convention committee volunteers to set the agenda and plan the various events. Succession Planning is the theme for this event. How timely, given all the succession and cross-training taking place at Barrett this year!
As we look ahead to 2012, the third party warehouse industry has never had a more promising outlook. In times of uncertainty many large firms look for opportunities to mitigate risk. The outsourced distribution model leverages the 3PL’s investment in facilities, equipment, systems, and talent; and allows our clients to invest their capital in activities that give them a higher return on that investment.
Barrett Distribution Centers is positioned for another extremely successful year. We will leverage capacity in Rochester, Memphis, and Fairfield, CA to increase our top line without increasing our fixed costs. We will stay focused on accuracy, productivity, and customer satisfaction to make 2012 even more rewarding for our employees.
