Industrial Manufacturer Benefits From Vendor Managed Inventory

Challenge

A large industrial manufacturing plant in the Great Lakes region was challenged by the time required for ordering, tracking and managing the plant’s janitorial and sanitation supplies. Plant management was required to spend excessive amounts of energy and resources handling the process, creating distractions from the plant’s primary objectives of safety, quality and efficiency.

Solution

Wesco’s sourcing and program management teams were deployed to analyze the manufacturing plant’s processes and inventory in order to develop a robust and efficient supply chain and MRO strategy. Wesco identified three main areas to help significantly reduce time and cost, while improving the overall MRO supply process.

Results

A Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) solution enabled the customer to hand the burdensome process of managing and ordering MRO supplies, in this case janitorial and sanitation products, over to Wesco. This enabled a more efficient distribution model through use of our regional distribution center, which is in close proximity to the plant. Our on-site sales and support teams delivered a number of improvements for the customer:

• Managing the inventory from sourcing to delivery, requiring less time and effort from the plant’s management team to manage MRO supplies
• Delivering higher levels of decision-making data and KPI’s that improve service levels
• Ability to better predict surges in demand or anomalies in the plant’s supply chain
• Operational improvements identified through inventory and process evaluations
• Local sales and support providing more on-site presence, ensuring inventory fluctuations are proactively addressed and remediated
• Better manage indirect spend, lower overall costs and focus more time on being a world class manufacture