CASE STUDY
Company
Cut-N-Weld
Location
South Africa
Industry
Services
ERP
Cin7 Core
Challenge
Operational challenges with forecasting and fill rates.
Solution
Netstock Professional Services engagement.
Result
Cut bad inventory by over R1 million, reduced stock-outs by 89%, boosted fill rate by 9%, and shortened forecast time
With Netstock Professional Services, Cut-n-Weld streamlined processes, enhanced supplier relationships, and improved fill rates. They now generate forecasts in hours instead of days, resulting in significant time and cost savings for their business.
In October 2020
Cut-n-Weld signed up as a Netstock customer to optimize their inventory and streamline their processes.
With all the disruptions supply chain companies are facing, we needed to get to grips with the functionality and use Netstock to its full capabilities. Our fill rate was not good, and we wanted to improve that.
Warwick Hogan, Majority shareholder at Cut-n-Weld
In February 2023
Cut-n-Weld decided to engage Netstock’s Professional Services. This program is designed for customers to boost user adoption, maximize the value of Netstock’s capabilities, align business objectives, and synchronize strategy, supply chain processes, and personnel.
In our meeting, Warwick and I had an in-depth discussion concerning his objectives, providing me with a comprehensive understanding of their organizational goals. We dived into the challenges they were facing and formulated a 5-month project plan to address and overcome these challenges.
Chantelle Ferreiro, Professional Services Consultant at Netstock
Forecasting
Fragmented Forecasting: Utilizing fragmented forecast and ordering information.
Forecasting Complexity: Using an externally maintained template and amalgamating diverse reports into one.
Time-Consuming Review: Faced with the time-consuming task of reviewing 400-450 items individually. Consuming approximately +/- 2 days of work.
Stock Holding
Stock-outs: Encountering frequent stock-outs.
Inactive Items in Netstock: Managing an abundance of inactive items in the Netstock system.
Managing strategic holding of excess inventory: A strategic decision was made to increase stock holdings, yet the difficulty was ensuring the surplus aligned with the right inventory.
Once the 5-month project was completed, Warwick noted the following benefits from his engagement with Professional Services:
Supplier Relationship Enhancement
Cut-n-Weld’s business was growing. They had increased the number of suppliers and were finding it increasingly difficult to stay on top of things.
Professional services showed us how Netstock evaluates suppliers per SKU, calculates lead times, and determines safety stock. This streamlined the process, saving time and fostering stronger supplier relationships.
Forecast accuracy
Despite initially relying on spreadsheets for forecasting, Cut-n-Weld found that Netstock’s fine-tuned settings significantly reduced the time spent on monthly forecasts from days to hours. The adjustment saved time and improved the accuracy of forecasts, which were now based on data and analysis.
Previously, our forecasts were more of a guesstimate than based on data and analysis.
Operational and strategic optimization
Professional services identified areas for improvement, helping Cut-n-Weld optimize inventory management. The deeper understanding of Netstock contributed to enhanced operational decisions, specifically in forecasting and ordering. Additionally, Cut-n-Weld gained insights to better manage the impact of supply chain disruptions through improved forecasting and ordering processes.
Reduction of excess and less stock-outs
During the 5 month engagement, Cut-n-Weld reduced their excess on bad inventory by over R1 million, and stock-outs decreased by 39%.
Fill rate improvement
Before Cut-n-Weld started with Professional Services, their fill rate was 77.7%. This improved to 86.6%.
There is still more work to be done, but with the Stock Projection module’s 12-month projection, we can see that with our improved forecast accuracy and more relevant settings, we will continue to see even more improvement.
Unlocking capital
By leveraging Netstock’s capabilities, Cut-n-Weld successfully reduced excess inventory, unlocking significant capital.
Netstock Professional Services proved instrumental in transforming Cut-N-Weld’s inventory management processes, leading to enhanced supplier relationships, efficient forecasting, operational optimization, improved fill rates, and substantial capital release for strategic business expansion.
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