During a recent workshop, we were genuinely surprised to find that many Dealerships rely entirely on their manufacturer replenishment programs to restock inventory and don’t even check to see how the manufacturer program is working for them. The fact is, manufacturer replenishment programs do not always put everything you need into your inventory. Often when we start management on a new inventory, we see plenty of parts that are active and selling that are not being automatically replenished by manufacturer programs, which results in lost profit due to delays in part deliveries.
While it may seem petty to do a stock order to capture parts that barely hit the radar, these parts add up and the extra time and effort it takes to get them when needed take a toll on CSI. It doesn’t take much time to run that old stock order program to be sure you have all the parts you need, and the impact on your inventory health can be huge! One thing you can do to make your stock order work accurately is to isolate the non-manufacturer controlled parts into a source (or group of sources) to set a realistic day’s supply and phase in criteria. Then, run a stock order daily and submit. Although this might show only a handful of parts that your manufacturer isn’t suggesting for you, for many dealerships these parts are making service and parts customer wait for no reason and the impact on the bottom line is bigger than you’d expect.
If you don’t believe it, test it! With only 4 parts showing up on this order each day, over 20 working days you could have 80 parts your manufacturer program is missing that need regular replenishment. You might notice that you have already been forced to purchase some of these parts up from your competitors.
If you’re not running a daily stock order in your DMS, we recommend starting now! Your levels of service will surely increase with more active and selling parts.
Read more about an acceptable fill rate here! Get touch to learn more about what we can do for your inventory!