Optimise your inventories and add up to 20% to your bottom line

As costs rise and stock holding becomes an even more expensive exercise across all industries, many companies are looking at technology to deliver a strategic focus on inventory asset management.

JSE-listed Ixchange`s VizAbility supply chain optimisation application, part of the Ability suite of business management applications has been designed to take all the elements of the supply chain - forecasting, inventory policy, data gathering, supplier lead times and customer service levels - and integrate them into a cost saving solution.

Partics, a distributor of Perkins engine spares, implemented VizAbility to control its parts warehouse stock levels and reduce costs. Director, Paul Deppe, says the company made the R750 000 VizAbility investment because of the "high stock levels" the company was forced to deal with through an over-extended transactional stock control system. "We were far too over-stocked with minimum insight into which products were moving quickly or slowly," says Deppe.

"The implementation of VizAbility has changed that situation completely and we now know what stock we need to buy in bulk as we can identify fast and slow moving stock with ease, and manage our stock according to world-class levels. Decision-making is also easier and we anticipate that the company will save substantially by not carrying excess stock."

Hytec, a South African importer, manufacturer and warehouser of hydraulic equipment also upgraded its automated inventory control system to VizAbility. Ernst Noethen, executive director of Hytec, says the upgrade to VizAbility will ensure the company can reduce its inventory load, as well as its capital outlay on stock. It will also assist the company in reacting faster to stock movement.

"We want to be able to know, for example, which stocks we need to fly in because they have a high demand, as well as being able to balance the airfreight cost against the cost of stockholding," says Noethen. He adds that the saving achieved through the implementation of VizAbility has been substantial, and that the system continually finds better ways of handling stock and accurately predicts ordering patterns.

"Ixchange can guarantee a lower stock-holding, and the associated lower costs with VizAbility. The system is designed to lower the investment inventories, optimise inventory levels, as well as enable better customer service levels because of the increased availability of needed inventory and decrease in carrying surplus or suffering stock-outs," says Johan Buys, director of Ability. "VizAbility enables customers to reduce operating costs in many areas: warehousing, distribution, and procurement, while also reducing the workload on managers."

Noethen feels that, while VizAbility provides Hytec with what it needs from an automated stock management system, the service from Ixchange is the factor that really keeps Hytec using the company`s software. He says service levels have increased by as much as 20 percent since implementing the software, while VizAbility`s reports have freed up money the company can spend on growing the business instead of buying and holding slow-moving stock for long periods.

Deppe adds that there were no problems interfacing VizAbility with the company`s mainframe-based data. He says the product was chosen on the recommendations of industry peers and slotted in comfortably with the latest networking systems Partics had just implemented. The automated electronic ordering processing ability is also expected to have a positive impact on the company`s logistics burden.