Embarrassed Not to Have Parts
Embarrassed not to have Parts (ENTH)
Clearly these are the parts you are embarrassed not to have when your customer comes calling. They include: filters, fluids, hardware, o-rings, GET for machines you sold, hoses (a subject of its own), keys, and any part for a machine you sold that your customer can get today at Walmart, NAPA or the local farm store. If you don’t have a part that he can get TODAY from somebody local, you have probably lost that customer for that part forever. Think automobile dealers.
Virtually every machine we sell has lots of hydraulics and thus lots of hoses. You can’t stock all the hoses for a machine. They age poorly and have very erratic sales. Most manufacturers make hoses non-returnable. When a customer blows a hose, it is the kind of repair he can do quickly. He is not going to wait three days for a hose. I like hose shops in my branches. It requires lots of management focus to pull off effectively since you will be competing with people who do this type of thing exclusively. It is worth it if you can devote the time. Throw away your turn criteria here for fittings. Your perceived availability will go way up in the customers’ mind. This is very hard to pull off without lots of top management focus.
I include new product introduction parts in the ENTH category. Make sure that your branches, central inventory control and equipment sales are communicating. You don’t want to have somebody who just purchased a machine from you to come in and you don’t have his GET or filter.
Almost all ENTH parts have very good turns so don’t be afraid to have a little safety stock here. Run reports on these parts to make sure you are hitting your target. I think anything less than 99.9% availability is unacceptable here.
Your customer doesn’t really expect you to be stocking an engine or sheet metal and certainly not at the branch level. He fully expects you to have ENTH parts. He will be mad and disappointed if you fail in this area. He won’t forget. He will tell his friends. Your Inventory group should spend lots of time getting this right.