Three talents with three diverse achievements in the final of Young Logistics Talent; Marijn Slabbekoorn set up a sustainability programme for DHL Express, Joris Teurlings implemented an improvement programme at CEVA Logistics Benelux and Nick Vreeswijk, as director of Fietskoeriers.nl, manages around six hundred bicycle couriers. Who are these talents and what makes them the Young Logistics Talent of 2019?
Marijn Slabbekoorn - DHL Express
Marijn Slabbekoorn's achievement in this election? Setting up a complete sustainability programme for DHL Netherlands. The finalist started as a part-time courier at DHL Express seven years ago and now has an impressive track record in sustainability.
Slabbekoorn conducted research at TNO during his masters at Delft University of Technology, where he graduated on Stakeholder Management in the last mile. Meanwhile, the finalist was still on the bus for DHL Express. Slabbekoorn saw opportunities; he sent a letter to the director outlining his vision for DHL. "Within a week, I was hired," he says.
That took some getting used to at the beginning, says Slabbekoorn. The finalist brought little experience when he joined as a GoGreen specialist. "I didn't know the corporate world. Every step I wanted to take naturally had to be researched and substantiated. I started small. One of my first cases was the deployment of electric cars in Amsterdam. That turned out to do well financially, partly thanks to subsidies we could claim. Then we continued to build. The Dutch branch now operates the largest emission-free fleet of DHL Express."
In recent years, the finalist has set up a full sustainability programme at DHL Express. "The fortunate case was that during that period we were setting up a whole new infrastructure, with all kinds of new premises. This had not yet included many sustainability measures, for example in terms of energy management. I dived into that and managed to make a conclusive case. The new buildings are always energy-neutral and are built to the highest sustainability certification, BREAAM Outstanding. The great thing is that we didn't just make the new buildings sustainable; all the old buildings were also tackled afterwards, with the result that the Netherlands has more than a quarter of DHL Express' energy-neutral buildings worldwide.
The manager currently works as Program Manager Go Green, at European level. "I extend the best practices from the Netherlands to other European countries. All major cities will have to deal with zero-emission zones. With current technology, you won't solve that yet with electric transport. That is why we are opening hubs on the outskirts of cities. Our goal is ambitious: by 2025, seventy per cent of all routes to and from customers should be zero-emission."
Slabbekoorn doesn't like hearing 'no' in his mission to make DHL a sustainable company. "For example, if it's not a good time to realise something, someone else might shrug. Instead, I look for other ways that do fit within the current climate. For instance, through other constructions. That might be cocky, but I see it as my strength."
Nick Vreeswijk - Fietskoeriers.nl
A director who knows what it's like to be on a bike himself and therefore knows all the ins and outs. That's how Nick Vreeswijk describes himself. This finalist walked an unconventional path within logistics. He studied to be a gym teacher in Zwolle and worked alongside his studies as a bicycle courier at Cyclone Post & Fietskoeriers. Now, 11 years later, he is operations director at Cycloon Post & Fietkoeriers and Fietskoeriers.nl. He manages six hundred postal workers and two hundred bicycle couriers.
Vreeswijk knew early on that he would "work for Cycloon for a very long time". He made it known to the owners that he was keen to grow with the company. At the time, Cycloon was still a local bicycle courier company that within five years grew into a national logistics provider with 22 postal and nine bicycle courier branches. "We soon realised that this could not continue, because we were growing with mail in a shrinking market. The parcels market was growing very much though. Then we founded Fietskoeriers.nl and that's how I became co-director of two companies."
Fietskoeriers.nl is now the only parcel delivery company by bike with national coverage. Nineteen partners with 600 bicycle couriers cycle together in 33 cities for companies such as Futurumshop, Girav and Dille & Kamille. Vreeswijk started there as business manager and, he says, had to drink a lot of cups of coffee to get any partners on board. "It was quite a turnaround for existing companies. The partners we started with were traditional bicycle couriers: companies that cycled a parcel from one company to another. In the partnership, they would provide larger parcel rounds for large customers. Sometimes at more competitive rates. We had to convince them that, despite those rates, this would earn them more in the long run. That they would end up getting a lot more work in."
Those partners will be glad in retrospect that they entered into the partnership with Fietskoeriers.nl after all. After all, the company's turnover has been on the rise for years. "We are growing very fast. In three years, we went from zero to one million parcels a year. For 2019, we expect more than a doubling in growth," says the finalist. "We started with B2C deliveries for online shops, but are now increasingly profiling ourselves as a first and last mile carrier, working with hubs on the outskirts of cities. This ties in with our initial goal of making cities cleaner."
Why the Fietskoerier.nl director should win the Young Logistics Talent title? "Because of the way I manage people," says Vreeswijk. "It helps that I have gone through all the steps in the company. When I started here, I was given a lot of freedom and I give the employees the same now. I make sure they challenge themselves and take that freedom. That really doesn't always go well, but by giving them trust and responsibility, people can really surprise you and rise above themselves."
Joris Teurlings - CEVA Logistics
CEVA Logistics is not supplying a finalist for the Young Logistics Talent election for the first time; in 2015, Contract Manager Mario Wopereis won the election and in 2017, Operations Manager Luc de Jong made it to the final. This year, it is the turn of Joris Teurlings, who set up and rolled out a Benelux-wide improvement programme at the logistics provider.
Teurlings started the improvement programme BPE Waves in 2016 as a Benelux Project Engineer. Numerous improvements were already being implemented at CEVA Logistics, but each site did so on its own initiative. "As a result, all those sites ended up working in a slightly different way. From the Benelux headquarters, we looked at how we could combine that knowledge and expertise. That's how the Best Practice Engineering (BPE) Programme was born," says the finalist. Within this programme, a central team works with a site's local team on process improvements for eight weeks. "During that period, you zoom in on the processes together. You look at areas for improvement and start implementing them within those eight weeks. We take the best practices from all those sites back to other sites."
Some three years later, the CEVA Logistics team has visited every location and even done an extra round to make the concepts even more professional. The improvement programme has now visibly borne fruit. Teurlings: "The total cost savings amounted to four million euros. Customer satisfaction went up, because customers received their products either faster or cheaper. For me, the enthusiasm of the employees was a very waardeful boost. Initially, the BPE programme was seen as yet another initiative from head office. At the end of 2016, the sites actually knocked on our door because they saw the effect it had and the contribution it made to the energy at such a site."
In this, the finalist said. "I really set this up and rolled it out as an ambassador. I sat down with the Vice President as well as with the employees on the floor. To then find that people let go of their sceptical attitudes in the long run, I'm proud of that."
BPE Waves still exists, but these days the focus is more on innovation rather than existing processes or tools. "We are now looking outside the walls of CEVA," he says. Teurlings no longer plays a role in that. The success of BPE Waves has earned him the position of Site Manager. He is now responsible for two branches of CEVA Logistics in Born, comprising some two hundred and fifty FTEs.
Any win in this election sees the logistics talent as a piece of recognition for all the work put into BPE Waves. "But it is also a great way to show what you can achieve within a large company with so many different layers. Other companies can easily use this as an example."
You can read about the achievements of the Logistic Manager of the Year finalists here. On 28 March, all the finalists will climb onto the stage to convince the professional jury and the public one last time. The final day will take place in Media Plaza, Jaarbeurs Utrecht. More information about the programme and (free) registrationfind here.
