Wednesday, August 24, 2016

How a $10 Billion Manufacturer turn their Unprofitable Inventory into Profits




GPS Customer Case Study: 
 
How a $10 Billion Manufacturer turn their Unprofitable Inventory into Profits

A $10 billion industrial equipment manufacturer recognized they had an inventory problem:  Too much inventory!  Finance launched an urgent initiative to reduce inventory.

Sales & Customer Service pleaded their case and demanded they maintain the entire inventory, especially service parts, as it was necessary to providing immediate support for their products in the field and customer satisfaction. They believed this justified the buildup of their overall inventory, the increased need for warehouse space, and their skyrocketed overhead costs, which all tied up their valuable working capital.

An analysis of the inventory identified a significant amount of excess and slow moving parts that had sporadic, unpredictable usage but its carrying costs outweighed any future sales or cost benefits.  These slow moving parts were also dragging down their very important overall inventory turns.

One of their previous reduction solutions was to sell it on the surplus market which still left them with a lot of residue.  Items sold into the surplus market at cost or below often ended up competing against them, or even worse, their customers!  They also found items were showing up in their customer returns for full credit. 

Their other option was to send the slow moving inventory to the scrap yard but this only provided a short term result. Besides, it was a painstaking effort to determine what to scrap and what to keep. Often within days of disposing of the inventory they ended up having a customer demand. This demand forced them to repurchase the items, usually at higher prices, with long lead times and minimum order requirements which created more slow moving inventory.

GPS Inventory Solutions was called in to help organize and optimize their inventory reduction initiatives.  Our profit driven GPS Inventory Bank programs offered them cost effective solutions that reduced or eliminated their overhead and inventory costs and had a positive impact on profits and shareholder value. 

Additionally, they retained immediate availability of the items so they could continue to provide a high level of product support to their customers.

Over a four year period of time by using the GPS Inventory Bank Program our customer:


  • Reduced their inventory by $24 million and avoided over $21 million in inventory carrying costs
  • Retained availability to satisfy 5,576 customer line item demands amounting to $5 million (at cost) of inventory activity for profitable customer sales 
  • Protected their brand and market integrity
  • Provided immediate item availability for long term product support
  • Freed up valuable warehouse locations and working capital
  • Improved workforce efficiency
  • Improved cash flows
  • Increased profits and shareholder value

Now that our customer has a proven cost effective exit strategy in place for their entire excess and slow moving inventory, they are no longer spending countless hours and multiple meetings trying to decide what to do every year.  Today they can use these resources to better focus on managing their profitable active inventory or other corporate initiatives.


For more information or to schedule a presentation to learn more about how our proven Profit Driven Inventory programs can work for your company, please contact us at (800) 896-0477 or email programs@gpsinventorysolutions.com.

GPS Inventory Solutions, Inc.

Email: programs@gpsinventorysolutions.com 
Website:  www.gpsinventorysolutions.com 
Toll-Free: (800) 896-0477




About us: 
 
GPS Inventory Solutions has been an innovative leader in managing slow moving inventory for manufacturers in a variety of industries for over 30 years.  Our goal is to significantly reduce or completely eliminate your costs of carrying excess and slow moving inventory without impacting your customer service, sales or profits.  GPS headquarters are located in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area with additional locations in the Nashville, TN area.


Too Much Inventory – Not Enough Space

GPS CUSTOMER CASE STUDY: 

Too Much Inventory – Not Enough Space 


A manufacturer of large industrial machinery was running out of room to store all of its production and service parts.  They had already established an exit strategy for their excess and slow moving parts by using one of the GPS Inventory Bank programs.  This created some much needed space and cost savings.

However, they were at the point of having to add another building to their footprint along with all of the additional costs. During their analysis of their inventory, a large batch of parts were identified that had slow unpredictable movement but they had not yet met the threshold to be completely reserved and scrapped.  One option considered was to move these items to a local 3PL warehouse to be stored and managed. They reached out to GPS Inventory Solutions for other options.

GPS presented its 3.5 Inventory Bank program as a solution that allowed this manufacturer to retain ownership of the inventory but move it to GPS facilities for storage and distribution.

How the GPS 3.5 Inventory Bank works for slower moving inventory:

  • OEM retains ownership of inventory -  No write off required
  • GPS warehouses, manages, and distributes inventory
  • OEM reduces annual inventory carrying costs to a minimal
  • GPS provides unlimited storage & distribution for a flat annual 3.5% fee of the total inventory value – No other transaction fees apply 
  • OEM realizes normal profit margins from sales transactions 
  • Easy transfer to Standard Inventory Bank once reserves are available for write off 


Here are the benefits gained by using the GPS 3.5 Inventory Bank Program:

The manufacturer found that the GPS simple 3.5% annual fee was much less than the costs quoted by the local 3PL.  Plus, there would be no additional transaction fees when they needed to move inventory.

After the designated inventory was moved to a GPS facility, the manufacturer was able to free up the space needed for new products without the costs of adding a new building.  They also found that they significantly reduced their inventory carrying costs using the GPS 3.5 program.

Once this manufacturer is ready to write off this inventory, one phone call can easily transfer it to the Standard Inventory Bank program.

For more information or to schedule a presentation to learn more about how our proven Profit Driven Inventory programs can work for your company, please contact us at (800) 896-0477 or email programs@gpsinventorysolutions.com.

GPS Inventory Solutions, Inc.

Email: programs@gpsinventorysolutions.com 
Website:  www.gpsinventorysolutions.com 
Toll-Free: (800) 896-0477




About us: 
 
GPS Inventory Solutions has been an innovative leader in managing slow moving inventory for manufacturers in a variety of industries for over 30 years.  Our goal is to significantly reduce or completely eliminate your costs of carrying excess and slow moving inventory without impacting your customer service, sales or profits.  GPS headquarters are located in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area with additional locations in the Nashville, TN area.