July 2009

Improved: Atlantic’s solution to managing MRO and production supplies when staffs are cut

Atlantic Fasteners, which has offered efficient vendor managed inventory to customers since the early '90's, has recently streamlined its Atlantic Inventory Management Service (AIMS), designed for all kinds of items not just fasteners, making it especially attractive to firms which have cut staff this recession.

AIMS allows Atlantic customers to include any of their existing vendors in the program. If the customer doesn't have a suitable vendor, Atlantic suggests one or helps find one. Atlantic manages the non-fastener, repetitively ordered items provided by others. It doesn't stock and ship the items, which can include electrical, plumbing, safety and industrial supplies. And it's been offering the service since 1994.

“Many manufacturers are stuck with skeleton crews, finding they must “make do” with whatever personnel remains. As a result, they face stock-outs and inventory shortages, potentially jeopardizing their survival during the downturn and their ability to react when the economy rebounds. Due to bar coding accuracy and our dependable monitoring of stock levels, AIMS virtually eliminates stock outs and shortages,” noted Atlantic president Tony Peterson.

For savings, Peterson cited one AIMS customer that has reduced the number of vendor invoices requiring payment from 628 to just 12 during one year. Vendors continue to ship directly to the customer, but the individual invoices go to Atlantic for payment. AIMS customers simply pay one consolidated monthly invoice issued by Atlantic.

For another Massachusetts-based manufacturer, which began the program with a total of 72 vendors, it now requires only 34 vendors to stock 10 departments under AIMS. Atlantic manages over 1,000 items and the customer has been able to save $44,000 annually on purchases of $177,000 - nearly 25 percent. Still another AIMS customer reports that the administrative time needed to manage its inventory dropped from 30 hours per month to just 15 minutes when it switched to the service, according to Peterson.

Recent AIMS improvements include online access to open and closed orders, clearer recognition of back ordered items, and faster importing of customer part information into the database.“We're constantly improving the system,” concluded Peterson.