Tesco Awards Maintenance Contract

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Tesco is one of the world's leading retailers, with a presence in 11 national markets throughout Europe and Asia. In the UK, it operates 32 distribution centres, 1988 stores that have a sales area of 27.8 million square feet, and plans to open 142 more stores during 2007/08 including acquisitions.

In Ireland, it operates 95 stores that have a sales area of 2.3 million square feet, and plans to open 9 more stores during 2007/08 including acquisitions.

Tesco PLC has awarded the contract to maintain its uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) at its nationwide distribution centres to Uninterruptible Power Supplies Limited of Aldermaston.

Tesco has 32 distributions centres nationwide, replenishing the shelves of nearly 2000 stores ready to meet the daily demand from its customers. Ruth Salter, corporate purchasing and buying manager at Tesco PLC says: "For our stores to be supplied with goods on schedule we cannot afford for distribution management systems to be unavailable."

Salter says that Tesco regularly reviews and seeks to maximise the quality of the services provided by outside contractors. "In this case, the ability to provide all of the services at every one of our distribution centres, on-schedule and on-budget was paramount. Uninterruptible Power Supplies Limited was the outstanding candidate and knowing that this aspect of the company's critical business is in their reliable hands ensures peace of mind."

Uninterruptible Power Supplies Limited managing director David Bond says that companies like Tesco recognise that UPS maintenance is key to ensuring maximum availability of computer systems and communications equipment. The cost of power failures could be severe both financially and operationally - for example lost revenue, employee and fleet downtime, and corrupted, lost or unavailable data. Preventive maintenance means that companies have the reassurance that the UPS will perform to requirements and keep business systems running.

Preventive maintenance carried out by Uninterruptible Power Supplies Limited includes checking system calibrations, evaluating operating conditions, ensuring that components are working and to assessing the optimum time for their replacement. According to Salter, ranking high on Tesco's list of attributes for maintenance service providers are an established Health and Safety culture and practitioners of best practices in all relevant areas.

Uninterruptible Power Supplies Limited has been able to meet all of Tesco's service requirements, confirms Bond. "All of our procedures - installation, commissioning, maintenance and right-sizing - are well-documented, safe and of consistently high standard. Our quality assurance systems are ISO 9001 certified. We have also achieved ISO14001 and OHSAS18001 certification which help to support Tesco's policies on the environment and health & safety."