Netstock removes the guesswork and improves Keir Surgical’s ordering processes

Managing critical supply through technology

The products that Keir Surgical supplies to hospitals are not “nice to have” items. These items are critical to the lives of patients undergoing surgical procedures, so achieving the highest level of inventory availability without running into excess is a real challenge. A challenge that Keir Surgical was trying to solve by exporting their sales data from their Sage 300 into a spreadsheet and using this data with assumptions and intuition to plot out their orders.

“Supplier lead times were always a guess and based on a supplier’s full line as opposed to individual items. It took tedious amounts of time to work out our orders each month, and I would need to go back and check every row to make sure that the calculated number made sense based on the three or 6-months sales trend,” says Martin Reeves, Operations Manager.

Implementing Netstock removed the guesswork and gave Keir Surgical the data and visibility they needed. The ability to adjust a forecast when an unexpected new hospital contract arose and the ability to override stock “on the fly” for a few periods with the knowledge that if sales decreased or stayed the same, it would adjust accordingly was of immense value to Keir Surgical.

“Initially, we questioned the recommendations that the system gave us but soon learned to trust them. As a result, our overall inventory value has decreased, yet our customer fill rate has remained high. Overall, Netstock is a robust tool that provides a wealth of on-time information that can help any business attain and maintain the most efficient inventory levels possible,” concludes Martin.