IT
L&S ORDER WISELY AND WELL
Spare parts suppliers L&S Engineers knew that the rate of growth in their sales to the construction and plant hire industries meant they needed to embrace the digital revolution.
A
spare parts supplier knos that it needs to havea huge inventory, if it is to serve the needs of existing and future customers. Huge
inventories, however, need amagaing, and managing well.
L&S Engineers, a spares merchant based in the West Midlands, employs more than 80 staff in various departments including sales, purchasing and warehouse management, produces a catalogue with products from more than 600 suppliers each year, allowing their customers to consolidate suppliers, reducing complexity and cost.
Orders are received through telephone, fax, email, via their website and over the trade counter, with around 7,000 orders being
processed in an average week. L&S stock and manage around 30,000 product lines, with more than 500,000 spare parts available in total which can be ordered directly from manufacturers for immediate back-to-back shipping.
The company uses Orderwise, the merchant and trade counter. Prior to taking on the software, L&S used multiple systems to assist them with their day-to-day processes. They had no digitised stock control, meaning a lot of processes were completed manually and order fulfilment relied on a paper-based exercise for picking, packing and shipping. Responsibility for purchasing stock was assigned to members of staff who would visit bins with clipboards to see which items were running low and then place orders by
phone, fax or email. Although these processes were working well for L&S it was becoming increasingly clear that a full stock control system would be needed if they were to meet their growth plans.
Realising the importance of ecommerce, the ability to integrate any new system with their website and other sales channels was an essential requirement. They were looking to automate order processing, despatch updates, as well as keeping stock levels and prices up- to-date on their website in real time.
Digital stock management With a digital stock management system, L&S were no longer reliant on staff judgement to decide what needed to be ordered and could access accurate data around stock levels. Stock availability has improved substantially meaning more customer orders are delivered on time and in full. In fact, managing special order items used to be one of their biggest challenges. Now, it all works seamlessly – product arrives, it’s located in temporary bins and is picked seconds later.
L&S decided to move to a fully barcoded operation in conjunction with a move to anew premises and invested in HHTs with pick rules and labelled nearly 30,000 new bins with barcodes.
Pickers now have picks sent to their devices and use tote trolleys to pick up to 24 orders at a time via the most efficient walk route. Pick accuracy has improved with a massive 50 per cent reduction in mispicks and return rates are now well below 1 per cent.
Stock replenishment More recently L&S introduced the stock replenishments module, which allows them to buy popular items in bigger quantities and
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www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net September 2021
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