Managing your inventory is critical to ensuring that your parts and service departments operate smoothly and efficiently.

While there are many steps you can take to help achieve a well-managed inventory, there are four factors that have a great deal of impact on the accuracy and effectiveness of your inventory management processes.

1. Select Quality Vendors

To provide quality repairs and customer service, it’s important to use parts you can depend on - but sourcing dependable parts doesn’t stop there.

By ensuring your parts are of a good quality, you can minimize defects and decrease the amount of time your parts department spends dealing with warranties and returns. This also helps to reduce the amount of time spent on fixing jobs that had already been completed.

2. Look for Multiple Vendors

While being loyal to a select number of suppliers can offer a number of benefits, having multiple vendors ensures that the parts you need will be available when you need them. This means your shop will be efficiently stocked, and special ordered parts are delivered in a timely fashion.

Take the time to source multiple vendors, only if some are used just for emergencies. This will ensure you are not put in a situation where you can’t find the parts you need, and that you aren’t stuck using parts that aren’t quite up to your standards.

3. Choose an Ordering Strategy

Having a strategy means that you are looking at the bigger picture which helps you to meet your goals. Ordering last minute or overstocking your parts department can result in a number of issues from decreased productivity to increased obsolescence. Effectively balancing Just-in-Time (for special order and minimal use parts) and Material Requirements Planning (parts with high turnovers) can be a great way to avoid overages and shortages.

4. Use Inventory Management Software to Your Advantage

Inventory Management Software offers a number of benefits when it comes to managing inventory, but your software is only as good as the people using it. Ensuring you take the time to properly set up and use your inventory management system to its fullest is the best way to ensure your records are accurate.

Of course, reconciling your inventory records to your actual physical inventory is an important step to take at least once a year to ensure that everything is working properly. Completing a physical count more frequently, on all or some of your SKUs, can also help identify areas of weakness.

For more information on the benefits of a well-managed inventory or to get a quote, contact Pro Count West today.