Hello everyone. I stumbled upon this site trying to look for answers to a few questions I have related mainly to the parts warehouse. I read some posts about auto restocking for techs using eautomate. We switched from omd to eautomate about a year ago. Seems to be working pretty good for us, but since we have some old timers in the company, the learning process is really slow. The company paid for some employees to go to training somewhere in Denver or wherever EA is located, but if you asked me, they didn't learn much. Online courses are offered, but I don't think people take them. Anyway, I am in charge of the parts and supplies warehouse, we have about 15 techs, a huge territory, we service all types of equip from KonicaMinolta to HP, Brother, Samsung, Toshiba, etc. We use the carstock system and I've set up min/max levels for each tech according to what our service manager has suggested they carry, usually between 3-4 thousand bucks worth of stock per tech. I replenish their stock every week using EA auto restock. We provide the techs with a weekly report that shows what they have used each week and where they used it at. We inventory each tech every quarter and whenever there is a variance, I use eviews to track down the item in question. This utility lets me drill down when the item was transferred to or from the tech, when it was signed out on a service call and it allows me to set date ranges, for example, since last quarter. This has helped me pinpoint mistakes made by the tech or dispatch department when signing out parts to a service call. I have to say I have a pretty good team in my warehouse and that most mistakes are by the tech or dispatch.
Like I said, I am also in charge of the supplies. Since this includes supplies we ship to customers, I use EA to determine the restock for the warehouse based on usage. This is where I'm having problems, because EA uses date ranges to determine the quantities to resorder. If, for example, schools are off track, the usage tends to dip, and it will take some time to "catch up" so when schools reopen, my stocks are not where they need to be to meet the surge. I guess nothing can be 100% automated.
We also have big OMS accounts that need toner stocked at their location. This is getting out of hand because we depend on a project manager to take inventory every week or so to make sure the customer doesn't run out. I get the report from the project manager and a suggested restock quantity. My role in tbis is to place the supply orders with the vendors and drop ship the toners to the customer. When this was brought up I didn't think it was a good idea to stock inventory at a customer's location because we don't have any control over who has access to the stock room. Well, upper management went ahead and did it anyway! Now we have three big accounts with different locations all over Los Angeles, and each one has a stock room. Upper management thinks this process can be automated, but I don't see any way how it could be. You need someone from our company to take inventory, then we need someone in admin to variance out the used quantities. The only automated thing here is when I create the PO if the project manager needs me to restock. I have suggested setting min/max levels just like the techs warehouses, but someone will still need to physically inventory their shelves in order for me to run the autorestock. Has anyone else here heard of or works at a company that does this? As far as I know, we are the only crazy enough to do this. Upper management doesn't understand this is not working, and as we get more of these types of accounts, thing are going to get tougher. By the way, does anyone here think it is the parts manager to do this? I feel it is taking too much of my time. I have voiced my opinion but not too strongly because i need my job, but at the same time I don't want to be taken advantage of. Sorry for the rant.
Like I said, I am also in charge of the supplies. Since this includes supplies we ship to customers, I use EA to determine the restock for the warehouse based on usage. This is where I'm having problems, because EA uses date ranges to determine the quantities to resorder. If, for example, schools are off track, the usage tends to dip, and it will take some time to "catch up" so when schools reopen, my stocks are not where they need to be to meet the surge. I guess nothing can be 100% automated.
We also have big OMS accounts that need toner stocked at their location. This is getting out of hand because we depend on a project manager to take inventory every week or so to make sure the customer doesn't run out. I get the report from the project manager and a suggested restock quantity. My role in tbis is to place the supply orders with the vendors and drop ship the toners to the customer. When this was brought up I didn't think it was a good idea to stock inventory at a customer's location because we don't have any control over who has access to the stock room. Well, upper management went ahead and did it anyway! Now we have three big accounts with different locations all over Los Angeles, and each one has a stock room. Upper management thinks this process can be automated, but I don't see any way how it could be. You need someone from our company to take inventory, then we need someone in admin to variance out the used quantities. The only automated thing here is when I create the PO if the project manager needs me to restock. I have suggested setting min/max levels just like the techs warehouses, but someone will still need to physically inventory their shelves in order for me to run the autorestock. Has anyone else here heard of or works at a company that does this? As far as I know, we are the only crazy enough to do this. Upper management doesn't understand this is not working, and as we get more of these types of accounts, thing are going to get tougher. By the way, does anyone here think it is the parts manager to do this? I feel it is taking too much of my time. I have voiced my opinion but not too strongly because i need my job, but at the same time I don't want to be taken advantage of. Sorry for the rant.
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