Scanning for savings in your parts department?

10th Nov 2016

There’s no doubt that everyone likes a saving. Whether it’s a time or cost saving, the flip side is an increase to efficiency or dollars back in your pocket. When we talk about increasing efficiency in a business, change to an existing process needs to happen. It’s this change which causes the most disruption and where most people look to the finer details to justify the expense. The automotive industry is no different, with many paper based or manual processes still existing on a daily basis.

The benefit of an efficient parts department is customer satisfaction however what’s not often talked about is the potential time saving within the process. The customer plays the most important role in the process given their need for the actual part and it’s the focus point of the business to ensure this component is treated with the most value. This makes sense for the majority, especially when it is the customer paying the invoice, injecting their money into the business and hopefully referring friends and family to purchase from the same business. Using an efficient parts solution will transform the process meaning that staff will only perform tasks which matter.

It’s our Logistics Solution which takes the tasks paper based companies perform on a daily basis and introduce them to technology. From here businesses who choose to consider this solution reap the rewards of time saved through increased efficiency which for many can be transferred into an expense saving. Let’s run through the process so you can work out how your business compares.

To keep things intuitive, our Logistic Solution has been broken down into three phases:

Labelling

It’s the labelling which increases the accuracy and integrity of your parts department through empowering a dealership’s spare parts department to produce labels for many reasons. From parts labelling to assist the point of sale, the labels will also reveal information for parts location on the shelves along with picking labels including shipping and dispatch labels. The main benefit here is the reduction of human error during invoicing which assists the point of sale accuracy.

Scanning

Through the use of scanners, the dealership can streamline further processes surrounding inventory management, inventory movement and quality control. Documents can be recalled by using barcodes, part inquiries can be answered by scanning the barcode to check quantity, location, price and other details. On the spot stock-takes and maintenance can be performed instead of writing a note to only key it back into the DMS at a later time.

Picking

The last phase of wireless picking makes this particular process more efficient and accurate, removing costs and impact on business reputation for incorrectly despatched goods. Transparency of picker performance through detailed reporting will also allow for management and staff to measure effectiveness of pickers and discuss strategies to work as a team to lift their performance.

It’s not only our Logistic Solution which provides a time saving, with other Parts solutions to improve parts ordering, receipting and OEM processes our portfolio will allow you to achieve more in the day.

Not only are their savings to be had in your parts department, there are many increases to efficiencies as you’ve just learnt. Pentana Solutions can identify these savings and efficiency increases in your business.