Question: Have you changed strategies for managing parts inventory in the past 3 years?

More than 60% of dealers who responded to Farm Equipment’s 2017 parts operations survey indicate they’ve made modifications to how they manage their parts inventories during the past 3 years. Here’s a list of several changes dealers say they have made to improve parts operations.

• “Went to central ordering of stock orders.”
• “Lowered depth and increased breadth of parts inventory.”
• “Better inventory management and return processes.”
• “We’ve increased inventory. We’re not just looking at history, but we’re also looking at sold-ahead reports to predict what we need to stock that we wouldn’t have history on. We’re also stocking more on term orders to help with margin.”
• “It used to take 3 customer calls per store before we would stock it, now it’s 3 calls into the company and a store will stock it.”
• “Trying to pay the parts people more on an incentive system.”
• “Increased inventory to increase fill percent and customer satisfaction.”
• “Focusing on dead inventory and reducing inventory.”
• “Carrying fewer older parts and trying to follow a better plan on what could break on new equipment as our list of parts to have on hand. We’re also listening more to mechanics and what they see could be a problem.”
• “Min./max. set-up cycle counts, carrying less inventory, run lean and mean, better merchandising on the floor.”
• “Reduced old parts, watching metrics closer, expanding offering.”

Additional Coverage

June 2017 Issue Contents