Fastener Warehouse’s Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) system has been carefully developed to easily transform our customer’s in-house inventory management system into a lean and efficient supply chain.
Our VMI system will dramatically reduce your overall costs in managing and procuring fasteners, giving you peace of mind. With our vast experience in the fastener industry, we understand each of our customers have unique requirements.
Whether it is enhancing our customer’s already established replenishment system or starting from the beginning, we can aid you in maintaining or achieving your lean initiatives. Our VMI system, a proven technology developed in partnership with Computer Insights, Inc., allows us to tailor it to the specific needs of each customer.
What are the benefits?
The VMI system can handle any type of manufacturing environment regardless of size and location. Once set up, the VMI system can easily transform your in-house management inventory system into a lean and efficient supply chain. This will help you, our customers, to get your products where they need to be and on time.
The benefits to using Fastener Warehouse Ltd.’s VMI system include:
- easy to manage and exceptionally effective system
- bin quantities effortlessly adjusted and refined according to usage
- optimal inventory level maintenance reducing overhead
- reduction of overhead opening up valuable, usable floor space
- easier-to-manage materials saving purchasing and production planning times
- diminished product shortages
- strengthening of lean initiatives
How does it work?
The Fastener Warehouse Ltd. VMI service uses a user-friendly barcode scanner in coordination with our inventory management system. As our inventory management system has been specifically designed for the fastener industry, we have the ability to tailor the VMI service to meet your specific requirements.
Pre-assessment
The first stage in setting up the VMI system requires assessing our customer’s needs, which involves:
- Assembling a team consisting of Fastener Warehouse and customer representatives
- Identifying the customer’s unique challenges, goals, objectives and desired outcomes
- Determining the layout of the work area to maximize the system efficiency and to decrease non-value added steps
- Discussing solutions for the challenges in your environment
- Establishing what materials are required for successful implementation
- Identify areas, and processes that will increase efficiencies in material management
- Identify areas of inefficiencies related to product shortages
- Implement continuous measurable improvement monitoring relative to each goal
Program Set-up
The second step is the set-up of the VMI service program, which involves:
- Identifying usage for all parts in order to determine bin quantities and amount of bins required
- Procuring or creating racks required to hold bins
- Installation of hardware and software to facilitate information flow
- Discussing solutions for the challenges in your environment
- Creation of databases containing all of the customer’s product information and locations for the scanner(s)
- Provisioning of labels for use in scanning
