Donaldson & Sons: A Case Study
Case Study
Born in 1860 as James Donaldson & Sons, a small timber merchant in Tayport, Fife, the James Donaldson Group has grown to become one of the UK’s leading independent processors, manufacturers and distributors of timber and engineered products.
One of its subsidiary companies, Donaldson Timber engineering, is now the Uk’s largest and longest established manufacturer and supplier of engineered wood products, with over 30 years experience.
With Donaldson Timber Engineering Ltd a sister company to MGM Timber (Scotland) Ltd, James Donaldson Insulation Ltd and James Donaldson Timber Ltd, the group provides a huge breadth of quality and local service with national distribution, with a total of 25 locations spread across the UK. They work with national and regional house builders, building contractors, off-site manufacturers, builders merchants and self builders to provide products and service of the highest quality, thereby saving their customers time and money.
Their ethos to continually improve their process and products so as to offer customers the best, in the safest and most sustainable way, and get the job done quickly and correctly first time. Apart from the quality of their service, James Donaldson & Sons Ltd also pride themselves on their environmental conscience, and go to great measures to ensure they meet high environmentally responsible standards..
Where Does Workflo Fit In?
As stated, the James Donaldson Group prides themselves on quality and efficiency, and their choice of Workflo for their printing and copying systems is reflected in this; our fleet of over 100 copiers and printers has been rolled out over their entire group, to all branches. Fully automated Workflo fleet management minimises downtime and provides a consistently high standard to streamline workload stresses.
We asked Carolyn Shields, James Donaldson & Sons group financial controller, how Worklo has improved their day-to-day production. Her reply was simple: It Works!
Having initially introduced Workflo solutions in their parent branch approximately six years ago, they found them to be incredibly effective and efficient, so soon rolled them out to all their branches across the UK. Prior to using Workflo, they needed separate printers for normal desktop needs and the printing of plans for new merchants, contractors and so forth but switching to the Workflo system, they can now use on printer for both functions, as they can print on A3 and regular sizes. Equally important to the group is the printing of the pay slips, which several printing systems are unable to process, but which again, Workflo can provide. This makes the system much more cost effective for them and saves a great deal of hassle and maintenance. It also meets their ethos of working in as environmentally conscious a way as possible, as opposed to running two separate machines with all of the added energy and materials.
The second sizeable benefit of teh Worklo system for Donaldson Timber Engineering Ltd, Mgm Timber (Scotland) Ltd, James Donaldson Insulation Ltd, and James Donaldson Timber Ltd, is that despite the national spread of branches, it’s easy to monitor usage as all of their printers can be controlled by their I.T Department, thereby minimising margin for error and keeping costs down. Carolyn was quick to praise the system, Michael Field who “knows the machines inside out” and Workflo as a company for proving an excellent service, saying that recently when they had a slight issue one morning, on telephoning, an operative had come straight out and it was resolved by lunchtime. That said , she stated that in all the years of being with Workflo, James Donaldson Group has never had a major problem, and that was the measure of satisfaction for her: printers “should just work in the background and not give any grief. With Workflo that’s what they do – it’s not just the price, it’s the service”.
