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Weldspares went ‘live’ with Optimiza 27 June 2008

New records were set when Warrington-based welding supplies market leader Weldspares went ‘live’ with Barloworld Optimus’ inventory optimisation tool Optimiza this week.

“From first introduction to ‘go live’ has been about nine weeks, though for four of those, progress was halted because I was out of the country” says Weldspares director Alan Underwood.

 “In terms of working days, the actual transition has been remarkable on account of its turn-round, in all amounting to less than a couple of weeks” he said.

The 40-man company – now viewed as the UK’s front-runner in welding, safety and industrial products – first approached Barloworld Optimus at ‘Softworld’ at the NEC, signing a formal contract with the Solihull-based software developer and inventory management consultant just two days later.

According to father and son team MD Mark Underwood and MIS & Marketing Director Alan, the search for the right software to cope with massive recent sales increases began at the beginning of last year, with final choice whittled-down to three potential systems by mid-March.

Optimiza’s unusual ability to take into account the unique supply and demand characteristics of a supply chain to effectively reduce stock levels by up to half while increasing service levels up to 20% proved instrumental in the final choice – Alan Underwood singling-out the tool’s ‘high levels of sophistication’ as the clincher.

The move came as pressure built up on Weldspares to maintain high service levels in the wake of massive sales increases over the past three years – up more than 30% last year alone.

The same period has also seen the formerly US-owned company respond to increasing inventory management challenges by developing its own in-house inventory analysis software, but as Mark Underwood put it, “...the pace at which sales were increasing had brought us to something of a crossroads, and we were faced with either spending a lot of time and capital on further developing the system or looking around for one that already did all we’d be looking for in a year from now”.

He admitted to ‘some surprise’ when the Barloworld Optimus team – led by Sales and Marketing General Manager Frank Gesoff – effectively demonstrated that the tool already included all of the features on their most ambitious wish-list and that the program came closest to matching what they’d been looking for.

“We didn’t set out with an inventory reduction target. Instead, the aim was to at least maintain – or better still, to further improve – service levels against a background of very high growth both in terms of sales and in geographical area” Mark Underwood said.

Driven by its own VVM – ‘Values, Vision, Mission’ – statement, Weldspares already lays claim to 97% off-the-shelf availability via its Warrington warehouse where capacity has recently been ramped-up by 90% to cope with additional demand.

With virtually all its business stemming from distributors and engineers across the whole of the UK mainland and Ireland, and with new customers in France and the Netherlands, Weldspares’ prime objective was to maintain and improve service levels at a time of massive growth without corresponding increases in inventory.

First results from Optimiza – dubbed ‘a very effective and practical tool’ by Alan Underwood – involve analysing and forward planning inventory profitability.