Partnering for Productivity
Does your company struggle with waste, high inventory and changing customer requirements related to labeling? Consolidated Products has a solution.
We recently completed our second year as a partner with a major appliance manufacturer. This company uses over 300 SKU’s of warning labels, wiring diagrams, data plates, model plates, carton labels, warranty registration cards, owners manuals and other related parts. (Most of their parts require agency approvals such as UL and CSA.)
Prior to our partnership, this company utilized a traditional replenishment process. Purchasing agents placed orders based on a demand plan that was driven by sales projections. They used a variety of suppliers and had no real process to managing their ECN (engineering change notification) process. The result is typical of this process – pricing was high due to dividing their needs between multiple suppliers, inventories and obsolescence was high due to ordering parts based on projections and not on actual need, purchasing spent an inordinate amount of time expediting parts due to engineering changes that required immediate attention.
We started our relationship by presenting our Lean Labeling Seminar to the company. They immediately saw the return on many of the value added services that we provide as a lean partner. We currently provide a vendor managed inventory program that utilizes an electronic kanban replenishment system. This system replenishes on actual usage, not on a projected usage, which eliminates the waste created by overproduction.
Other productivity realized:
- Purchasing department time devoted to labeling and printing has been reduced by 75%.
- Summary invoice system eliminates over 500 invoices per year.
- SKU Consolidation resulted in 20% cost reduction in first year.
- Expedited freight charges eliminated.
- Ongoing productivity projects exceed 10% per year in additional savings.
We are always looking for industry leaders to partner with. Please contact us for more information.