Situation

Since 1931, The Iron Shop has enjoyed a local reputation for outstanding design and fabrication of custom-built spiral staircases, curved stairs, and floating stairs. With the introduction of Spiral Staircases in 1972, The Iron Shop's quality and value became available for the first time on a national basis. Demand for the popular kits over the years has made The Iron Shop the leading manufacturer of spiral staircases

Challenge

For years and years, we would ship inventory to our branches so they could sell them to their customers. It seemed like the branches were always running out of inventory faster than they should have been. When we questioned them, we were told that either we shipped the wrong items, we shipped the wrong number of items, the freight company made a mistake or some other excuse. We lived with this situation for all of these years because we were told that accurately tracking the branch inventory would be too big a job - it would require fulltime inventory managers at all of our branches as well as our Pennsylvania headquarters. Even then, inventory wouldn't be accurate we were warned. It finally reached a breaking point when we found that a single problem cost us over $50,000. We knew we had to do something but we weren't optimistic. We had always heard that it would be a logistical nightmare.

Solution

Summit Software implemented an inventory tracking system based on a series of checks and balances. Employees involved with shipping inventory to branches and receiving shipments at the branches now sign off on the accuracy of the shipments. The processes are streamlined in a way that allows us to quickly and yet accurately track material sent to each branch. Employees are now motivated to make sure inventory is accurate because their signature is on the shipping documents. It's no longer anonymous.

Results

The logistical nightmare we feared never materialized. The system Summit implemented allows 1 single part time employee at our headquarters, in coordination with employees at each branch, to accurately track inventory at all of our branches, and she spends less than half her time on inventory. Due to the efficiency of the system, shipping and receiving of material is a breeze. Problems are instantly identified and rectified instead of going unnoticed for months and years. Summit Software has saved us tens of thousands of dollars each year in lost inventory. We only wish we had done this years ago!