Xerox used a variety of informal checklist methods to monitor maintenance parts and consumables used for the support of a Fortune 100 customer in Redmond, WA. Xerox maintained one secured location to house this inventory for use by six local field service technicians as a central depot.
- High inventory usage - no accountability for maintenance parts and consumables used day to day. XBS was spending $13,930 per month on spares and consumables. Service request forms provided inadequate data to support how inventory was allocated to technician and to actual jobs. The existing tracking methods provided little or no business data for Xerox.
- Inventory levels were too high - the need to meet high levels of service and no formal methods for determining supply levels drove "just in case" ordering and created excess inventory at the depot, in technicians' cars, and other working locations. Xerox technicians made sure to carry large safety stock of inventory to avoid stocking out. Managing these high levels of stock became time intensive because of the periodic counting required to maintain the high levels.
XBS evaluated and purchased Nexiant Select Point-of-Use (POU) technology to address the needs of the Redmond location. XBS recognized that POU technology drove accountability for management to the end user - the XBS service technician. The POU technology reduced the time required to manage inventory and costs by lowering inventory levels and usage.
In the two months following implementation, XBS experienced significant success with the implementation of Nexiant Smart Inventory® Solutions. Combining the inventory carrying cost savings and the ongoing consumption reduction, Xerox realized hard dollar cost savings of $18,565, which represents an inventory cost reduction of 11% and an ROI of 144%.
"Beyond inventory cost, the Nexiant system gives me timely business data over to manage technician and service performance,” said Brent Youlden, client account manager at Xerox. “I find that valuable. I'm looking forward to implementing more automated POU units.” |
