My good buddies at MCA Solutions and Click Commerce have expressed interest in where I was going with my blog postings, particularly since I’ve focused on both the planning as well as the execution of service parts logistics. The folks at Servigistics are pretty interested as well. These companies plus Baxter Planning Systems all focus on the “what to put there” topic and to a degree the “where to put Forward Stocking Locations”. Check out their web sites and blogs for more detail on those topics. I’ve worked side by side with and know many people working now at these four companies and each offer superior products and services to the service parts professionals and organizations.
What I’ll do is focus on some of the “where to put Forward Stocking Locations (FSL’s)” and “what to look for when selecting a service provider to manage them” topics. The natural for me to focus on is what to look for when selecting a service provider to manage FSL’s, so I’ll start there first. In the last few months I’ve traveled around the US and to Europe and here’s what I hear progressive service parts logistics organizations looking for:
- Working with a partner who has a long established laser focus on service parts and critical item logistics. One that has a majority of their revenue generated from this line of business, and resources (people on board) with experience in this unique space. The people I’ve spoken with are looking for a partner who brings fresh creative perspectives and ideas to the table for evaluation and incorporation into a solution capable of providing the extreme customer service I speak of.
- Global coverage of a partner’s current network and capability to expand to countries in Frontier Markets (a term coined by BusinessWeek,,, I think,,, to describe markets that are developmentally even less mature than the typical Emerging Market countries).
- A partner with resources located in regions such as Europe, Latin America, Asia Pacific and North and Central America; the “boots on the ground” available local business hours with local language regularly spoken (not available by request). Was it John Chambers from Cisco who for many years preached plan globally but manage locally? In our business, the value of local presence and knowledge of cultural and geographical uniqueness is immeasurable.
- The ability of a partner to support complex customer unique business processes from both an Operations and Information Technology standpoint. Each of the companies I spent time with recently has expressed the fact that they have unique requirements based on their end customer’s requirements of them. Remember my posting on Extreme Customer Service? The best partner has what I think are the three most critical components; the right people, process, and technology. All three are needed - always.
- Did I use the word “partner” enough? This is a key point. The people I’ve spoken with are looking for a partnership, not a supplier / vendor relationship. Since the goal is to provide extreme customer service to the end customer, each party in the partnership must have a deep understanding of the other’s business environment and both must have congruent goals. Only when this occurs can the partnership thrive and the needs of each partner be served.
Those are my top 5. I’ll drill into each in subsequent postings, and also touch on determining the exact location of Forward Stocking Locations. Thanks for listening….. John Wild
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