How do you handle car stock?

[schooltech]

If you can, trying to have machine specialists can help reduce spotty inventory levels. At the last place I was at, where we had about 25 techs, we "sort of" had territories and specialists. In our local office, as we were a satellite office, our territory was huge. In our main office, they had specialists that would work on certain ranges for about 75% of their calls, and it actually worked pretty well. One of the downsides of it is when customers would call with down machines and only the specialist knew enough to go make it work. Sometimes, they were in more demand than they could keep up with.

Software can help keep those real-time inventories more accurate. I doubt any company would have a 100% perfect system, as too many hands in the cookie jar add to the variables of inconsistency.

When you have techs that work on everything in the field at any given time, inventory issues will pop up.

So, I would say that machine specialists and quality real-time inventory software can help with the inventory issues. The unfortunate thing is that there are too many variables from each dealer and location that has to be tweaked to make it work, and industry consistency can be difficult. Another thing I can add is to try to keep inventory car stock levels minimal. I wouldn't want to be responsible for 10k in inventory!!!

[msaeger]

I would guess not having a car stock is popular with smaller independent places maybe ? I have worked at Ikon and Ricoh and both places use car stocks. I know a large Ricoh dealer here uses them and I know Xerox does too. They want you doing calls not getting parts. I have some big accounts I have parts at and I keep some in my car.

[Kopyrtek]

We have a large territory and it requires that we have car stock.Way too many miles to cover and not carry some stock.Nobody carries more than about $2500 in stock.We stock the usual feed rollers,hot rollers,df kits and pm kits.We try and cover the basics of most calls.

[JVergin]

Our company consists of two techs (including me as a tech and IT rep) covering all of Omaha and the surrounding cities withing about a 60 mile radius. We work on the following: Panasonic and Savin Copiers, Duplo folders, and Riso duplicators and collators. I have an 02 Taurus (my personal car as I haven't received my company car yet) it has a pretty big trunk which is completely filled with carstock. If I have PMs to do I usually also have my back seat filled with PM kits as well. I keep what I believe I need in my car stock. As I use it I mark what I used and the QTY on the outside of the container I took the part from. When I get back to the office I restock. I keep things like fusing rollers, feed rollers, sep pads, clutches, mylars, drums, developer, a few small PM kits, PCUs, and many other items in my car stock. Just things that I believe are commonly replaced, and things I would like to have just in case. Once a month I set aside some time to go through my car stock to see if there's anything I forgot to restock.

[mjarbar]

We have three engineers all of whom carry carry car stock - about £2 - 3k worth covering the majority of the current Canon range.

Each day we do a picking list of what the engineers have used and re-pick as req, as our engineers carry more than 1 of each item they do not have to come back to the workshop each day so on the whole they are out on the road.

On the first Monday of the month the engineer is given an inventory of their computer stock and it is recalled, counted and reissued twice a year. We have found this system a little intensive but errors are kept to a minimum and we haven't had a problem we haven't been able to resolve yet.

[dckm]

We have a set inventory. Everybody has different types of machines, sizes, printers etc. I run a 3 month usage report, give it to the guys, and show them what they use. I limit their inventory to 1 months worth of parts. Average tech carries about $4500. At inventory time, I run a 6 month obsolete part report. (dead stock) I get that stuff back, or give the tech the option to keep it. Many things run in cycles. But that way, it is never older than 6 months, and when I get it back, somebody else can use it, or it goes into the warehouse inventory.

We assign each tech his own warehouse and restock levels.

This system seems to work. when I took over, I had $75000 worth of junk. Was lucky to dump some here and there, but ended up writing much of it off.
My guys could not live without car stock. Some get into the office 6 times a year only!

[mjarbar]

	Quote:			Originally Posted by dckm
	This system seems to work. when I took over, I had $75000 worth of junk. Was lucky to dump some here and there, but ended up writing much of it off.

That's the biggest problem I have is getting the bean counters to realise that just because it has value on the system means that it has value on the shelf!

Fuser roller for an NP1010 anyone!!!

[Jules Winfield]

	Quote:			Originally Posted by Brave Hart
	We run boot stock and find it very help full. Especially in closing calls faster, once a tech comes in for parts he wastes at least 2hours plus. Sorting his parts, chatting to fellow staff or just sit around smoking and drinking coffee. Each tech has his high mortality parts on him at all times, so he cleans up his calls much quicker. He books out his own stock and controls it by himself, with his PDA he will book out the parts he has used and shoot pass the warehouse and pick up the new parts from his pigeon hole when he gets a free moment. He pays for whatever is short on the list at month end count so he makes sure his stock is up to date. He is not allowed at the workshop unless there is a technical meeting, so that means, he will sometimes only come in to workshop once a month. It works for us now, but it took us along time to get it sorted out.

So what's the suicide rate for your technicians?

[atwageman]

	Quote:			Originally Posted by Jules Winfield
	So what's the suicide rate for your technicians?

Suicide rate must be high. A competitor I know down the street, had a system in place that whatever the tech was short on at the end of the month, he would have to pay for. That worked until the company got sued and lost big time. Apparently the techs were able to prove that the office girls weren't always keying in the proper usage etc. from the service invoices or whatever.