ASF News

The goal of every industrial operation is to reduce costs, increase productivity and yield profits. While this is easy to put on paper, it can be much more difficult in practice. Managing employees, adhering to regulations, maintaining essential equipment and ensuring a steady flow of class "C" components are only a handful of the daily tasks that industrial companies are expected to perform. While vendor managed inventory can't help with everything, it can help with your inventory. By utilizing a VMI program, you cut down on waste: wasted time, wasted inventory and wasted money.

Do you – or your employees – spend countless hours tediously managing your operation's inventory? Do you perform regular, agonizing hand counts of your class "C" components? Have you found yourself thinking... "Is there a better way to do this?" In short, the answer is a resounding, "Yes!" With vendor managed inventory from ASF Components, the burden of tracking your operation's inventory is shifted from you to your supplier. By allowing us to manage your inventory, you receive the parts that you need, when you need them and – more importantly – you free up massive amounts of time that can be better spent performing productive, profitable tasks.

If you've recently become interested in implementing a vendor manage inventory program into your operation, you have almost certainly weighed the costs and the benefits. After performing those calculations, you've become aware of the amount of money that you can save by employing VMI. More importantly, you've learned that you can significantly ease your plant's logistics, saving you – and your employees – valuable time.

If you've been thinking about transitioning your inventory management over to a vendor managed inventory program, you likely have a slew of questions. Does the vendor you're considering have access to a large number of SKUs? Do they take steps to ensure the quality of the class "C" components that they're sourcing? Can they adjust stock levels, as needed, as new information comes to light? If these questions were asked of the team at ASF Components, our answer would be a resounding, "yes, absolutely." In this post, we're going to look at how our capabilities – and experience – can help you streamline your supply chain and make inventory management a breeze.

Getting the parts that you need to keep your operation running is only half the battle. The other half, naturally, is ensuring that those parts are dependable and of a high quality. If you're sourcing your parts from a supplier that isn't performing their own quality checks – thorough quality checks – then you're wasting precious time on returns and internal stock management.

Choosing a source for your company's class "C" components can be challenging. As you are entrusting your provider with maintaining stock levels, juggling product options, managing lead times and ensuring quality, it is imperative that you trust the supplier that you choose. You must be able to rely upon them as their decisions will be a reflection of your company. Thankfully, your decision can be made easier by selecting a provider that is ISO 9001 certified. Showing that accompany has implemented steps to ensure consistent quality, ISO 9001 certification is a reliable, surefire way to determine whether or not a supplier will rise to meet your exacting standards.

Sourcing the class "C" components that you need can be a chore. To combat the difficulties, many manufacturers opt utilize vendor managed inventory to maintain their stock levels. However, if your VMI provider doesn't offer a massive selection of products, you risk not having access to the essential parts that you need to avoid downtime and ensure a high-quality, consistent output. For this reason, vendor managed inventory without a wide range of in-stock class "C" components is ineffective and, unfortunately, creates more problems than it solves by shackling your production capabilities with unnecessary limits.

When searching for a provider of vendor managed inventory services, it's essential that you vet each candidate's distribution capabilities. Regardless of your operation, your provider's ability to deliver critical parts and components in an accurate, timely manner is the key to successfully transitioning to VMI. A great VMI partner will offer a broad inventory, a wide shipping area and an adaptable inventory strategy. In this post, we're going to talk about how these elements – and others – contribute to a well-run and effective VMI program.

When implementing your vendor managed inventory program, it pays to work with a partner that has extensive experience in providing engineering and planning support. With the ability to take a reliable, data-driven approach to VMI, a provider that is capable of viewing your problems from an engineering standpoint can help you cut costs, lower on-hand inventory and reduce your company's overhead. This is accomplished primarily through proactive monitoring of your business' needs and regular adjustment of your class "C" component stock levels.

Quantity is important when you’re looking at a vendor managed inventory provider to handle your class “C” components. You need to be certain that your stock levels will be consistent, that your employees will have access to the parts that they need and that you’ll receive the timely, accurate shipments that your operation requires to run efficiently. However, quantity isn’t everything… you also need to be able to depend on your vendor managed inventory services. You need to know that the class “C” components they are sourcing for you are able to perform to your standards. You need to be able to rely on your VMI provider to not just source parts, but to vet them for quality. Today, we’re going to look at why – and how – ASF Components is equipped to ensure the quality of your class “C” components inventory.