Cummins are a market leader in the field of diesel engines with plants worldwide. They have been producing Diesel Engines at their Darlington UK plant since 1963.

The plant covers 252,000 sq ft and currently runs assembly and test operations. The current plant capacity is 60,000 per annum working a 2-shift system. The current customer base covers 226 customers in 40 countries.

Currently Cummins offer 4900 separate engine options and use a total of 7865 part numbers in its assembly process.

Materials are purchased from a worldwide supply base including Europe, UK, US, the Far East and Asia.

Vantec business activities with Cummins commenced in 1995, when Vantec started delivering parts to the Darlington engine plant from its Sunderland warehouse on a daily basis.

In 1999 the operations changed substantially. At this time Vantec moved onto Cummins site where they set up a warehousing operation, supplying vendor-managed parts to the engine plant. 

In 2002 the Vantec operations again increased significantly. At this point Vantec were contracted to manage the functions of receiving, storage and product issue functions for all suppliers, this was then expanded to include the engine despatch operation, increasing the Vantec onsite headcount to 55.

Since that point Vantec have continued to work closely with Cummins providing management, staffing and system support for additional projects such as the introduction of decanting and paperless picking, as well as sequenced picking for parts such as starter motors, alternators and radiators.

In addition to the core services we have also supported in such areas as supplier development, using tools including Six Sigma value stream mapping and process mapping among others. Vantec will continue to work with Cummins to further improve the services that are supplied to themselves and there supply chain.