Streamlining Inventory Management for Defense Manufacturing

This operations facility is a manufacturing, final assembly, test and storage
operation for missiles and fire control programs. The facility occupies a
combined manufacturing and support function floor space on more than 2.2
million square feet spread out over more than 2,400 acres of land. More than
1000 employees work in the facility’s manufacturing and support buildings.
To learn more about MSC’s BNA, our unbiased process, and data assessment
of your indirect supply chain, designed to identify customized solutions to
empower performance, generate savings and maximize profit potential,
call us at 800.645.7270.

INVENTORY STOCK-OUTS, NO USAGE VISIBILITY, LONG
LEAD TIMES & LABOR SHORTAGES

Conducted an extensive operational site assessment through MSC’s Business
Needs Analysis (BNA) to identify opportunities to achieve this customer’s goals for
a strategic inventory management solution and address the negative productivity
impact of diverting production labor to inventory management.

Goals included:

• Expand and automate inventory management

• Eliminate stock-outs and reduce long lead times

• Gain inventory visibility into users, usage, and cost center

• Eliminate time production employees spend on inventory management

• Eliminate central warehouse to reduce employee travel time for supplies

MSC DELIVERED A STRATEGIC & CUSTOMIZED SOLUTION
FOR INVENTORY MANAGEMENT

• Dedicated 3 MSC In-Plant associates to service 2 million sq. ft. of
  production across 2000 acres

• Implemented a comprehensive point-of-use vending program with 88
  machines in 17 locations

• Customer specific inventory is managed on site to reduce lead time

• Customized inventory management performance metrics reporting

IN LAST 12 MONTHS, DOCUMENTED NEARLY $750,000 IN COST SAVINGS

• $557,867 inventory management savings

• $180,000 yearly labor savings

Established a cadence of quarterly Customer Improvement Reviews (CIR) at which
MSC and the customer collectively review a “scorecard” to evaluate inventory
management progress on identified goals and look for improvement opportunities
for additional cost savings and increased productivity. Next steps include:

• Continued expansion of dedicated MSC In-Plant associates from
  an initial 1 to now 3

• Continue to monitor and expand point-of-use vending as customer
  expands production

• Vision to expand to onsite warehouse and processing center