Built in, not bolted on: How FLX Logistics started right

A new site, without the usual learning curve

Opening a warehouse is as much about the systems around it as it is about the four walls and the racking. For most sites, those systems only really prove themselves once problems start appearing - a missing pallet, a location that doesn't match the report, a query that takes half a day to run down. It's reactive by nature, and that reactivity is often treated as simply the cost of getting a new site up and running.

The product mix is genuinely wide. It runs from dry goods such as rice, sauces, cereals, lentils and noodles through to cosmetic and household lines like baby wipes, baby bath and lotion and make-up wipes. And because Peterborough runs its own ambient transport and distribution, the accuracy of what sits on the racks doesn't stay on site, it flows straight through to the wider network.

FLX Logistics wanted something different: a site where the team had a clear, trustworthy picture of what was happening on the floor from the very first day of operations - not after the first quarter, not after the first stocktake, but from day one.

That's where DexoryView came in. Rather than being introduced once problems started to surface, it was scanning every location in the warehouse from the moment the site opened.

"We wanted this site to be dialled in from day one, not something we spent the first year catching up on," says Sam Goodger, Head of Warehousing at FLX Logistics (Part of the Freshlinc Group). "Having DexoryView scanning every location from the moment we opened meant we had visibility built in, not bolted on."

From novelty to habit

Because DexoryView has been part of the Peterborough operation since the doors opened in 2023, accuracy was designed in from the very beginning rather than retrofitted later. The clearest proof sits in the audits: every customer audit at the site has returned 100% accuracy results since it opened. For a high-volume ambient operation feeding its own transport network, that is confidence which carries well beyond the four walls, from the rack, through despatch, to the end customer.

What's notable about FLX Logistics isn't just that DexoryView was there early, it's how naturally it's become part of how the team actually works.

New systems often face a quiet resistance in warehouses. Teams have their own rhythms, their own shortcuts, their own trusted ways of checking things; walking the floor, radioing a colleague, pulling a report and cross-checking it by hand. A new tool can easily become something people log into occasionally, rather than something they build habits around.

That hasn't been the case here. DexoryView has settled in as something closer to a reflex than a system, the first place the team turns, not the last resort.

If a picker flags that a location looks off. If a query comes in from a customer about where their order is in the building. If a shift supervisor simply wants to satisfy themselves that everything is where it should be before problems start piling up, DexoryView is where they go first. Not instead of walking the floor, but before it. It's become the difference between finding out something's wrong and confirming that something's right; a subtle shift, but one that changes the whole posture of how the team operates.

"It's not a system we have to remind people to use," Sam Goodger explains. "It's just become how we work. If someone needs to check something, that's where they look, before it ever turns into a problem."

Removed from the equation

In a warehouse without that kind of visibility, small issues have a way of compounding. A location that's slightly off doesn't get noticed until a pick fails. A discrepancy doesn't get flagged until it's holding up an order. By the time a problem is visible, it's often already become urgent, and urgent problems pull people away from the work they should be doing, into the work of putting out fires.

At FLX Logistics, that pattern has largely been designed out. Because the team can check first, most potential issues get caught and resolved while they're still small, a quick confirmation, a location correction, a query answered in minutes rather than escalated over hours. The site simply generates fewer fires to fight in the first place.

A different kind of confidence

Ask the team at FLX Logistics what's changed since opening, and the answer isn't really about a piece of technology, it's about a feeling. There's a confidence in how they talk about the warehouse: not "we think stock is where it should be," but "we know, because we checked, and it took thirty seconds."

That confidence didn't have to be earned the hard way, through months of catching up after the fact. It was there from the first day the site opened, because the tools to build it were there from the first day too.

For a site built to move fast and serve customers who expect precision, that head start has mattered. It meant the team spent its early months building relationships and refining operations, rather than firefighting basic visibility gaps that other new sites often spend a year working through.

"Having DexoryView scanning every location from the moment we opened meant we had visibility built in, not bolted on," Sam Goodger says. "That's made all the difference in how quickly we've been able to just… get on with running the warehouse."