Industrial Fastener Company Streamlines Replenishment for Next-Day Delivery
The Brampton Fastener Company (Brafasco), an industrial fastener and supply company, sells more than 20,000 regularly stocked products through 21 retail outlets. With a strong commitment to superior service, Brafasco promises customers next-day delivery for any item not immediately available at the store—a challenge the main warehouse works hard to achieve. As the company has expanded, Brafasco’s proprietary replenishment and warehouse management systems were having difficulty keeping up with customer demand. Brafasco recognized the need for a flexible solution that would integrate key business information, automate critical business processes, and support its aggressive growth strategy for the future. The company chose Microsoft Dynamics GP to help improve point-of-sale order processing, streamline purchasing and replenishment processes, and increase productivity in the warehouse.
Company Overview
The Brampton Fastener Company (Brafasco) provides industrial fasteners and supplies for manufacturers’ production lines, service and repair vehicles, machine shops, tool rooms, and trades. With an inventory of more than 20,000 products, the company stocks one of North America’s largest, most diverse assortments of fasteners and related products.
Brafasco prides itself on being able to source and supply hard-to-find items, provide custom-made items, and offer expert technical support and advice. With a strong commitment to customers, Brafasco’s proactive, attentive service and rapid product delivery have built this Canadian company from a small, single storefront in Brampton, Ontario, to a regional company with 20 Canadian retail locations and one retail outlet across the U.S.–Canadian border in Livonia, Michigan. The Brampton site now serves as the company’s headquarters and main warehouse.
Business Challenge
Brafasco’s retail stores strive to maintain a diverse but minimal on-hand inventory. To achieve this, each location is replenished nightly in order to ensure the right amount of on-hand stock for the following day, and to provide next-day service for orders that could not be fulfilled at the store. As the company has increased in size, Brafasco has had to add significant staff to maintain its competitive edge and live up to its customer promise. With daily sales approaching 2,000 different products, the effort to keep up with replenishment and manage inventory, based on “visual” feedback, was becoming more and more difficult to perform effectively. Jack Hahn, Brafasco’s Vice President of IT, explains, “One problem was inventory integrity. The system said I had 50 pieces and I had none, or it said I had none and I had 50 pieces.”
At the retail outlets, Brafasco also needed a more flexible point-of-sale (POS) system that would provide item and pricing data at the sales counter, as well as effectively share data with the warehouse for replenishment purposes.
To complicate matters, Brafasco’s parent company was purchased by a competitor. As part of the deal, Brafasco was spun off as an independent company. Brafasco faced moving its entire IT infrastructure from Chicago to Brampton, a challenge—but also an opportunity—to establish business systems adapted to its own specific requirements.
The company already used Microsoft Dynamics GP for its core financials, but warehouse management and purchasing were handled by a proprietary system running on an IBM AS/400 server. This system had never performed effectively, and now would require extensive, and expensive, customizations by an outside contractor with limited knowledge of the business.
Solution
To implement Microsoft GP, Brafasco engaged Microsoft Certified Partner Unified Business Solutions to help develop a solution that would use sales information to support more efficient warehouse and inventory processes.
Unified Business Solutions worked closely with Brafasco’s IT team to define system needs. “We interviewed some of the higher-end users who were experienced with the previous system and could explain exactly how the storefront side of the business worked,” explains Jack Hahn. The project team also looked closely at the warehouse and clearly defined best practices for managing inventory and replenishing the branch locations.
Microsoft GP is implemented as a thin-client solution on a server farm using HP equipment and running Microsoft Windows® 2000 Advanced Server operating system. Currently, remote access to the application is handled through Citrix MetaFrame Access Suite, running on four servers, and Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 operating system and Terminal Services running on a fifth server. Future plans include upgrading all five servers to the Microsoft server configuration. The architecture also includes Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 to support e-mail notifications, Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2000 for application-level security and data protection, and Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000 for data storage.
Business Benefits
By implementing Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Polar Bear Corporate Education Solutions is taking advantage of a wealth of benefits, including:
• Efficient replenishment of all 21 locations overnight
• Increased productivity in the warehouse to support replenishment and better manage item inventory
• Improved POS processes integrated with replenishment and warehouse processes
• A complete solution that reflects the way Brafasco conducts business
Overnight Replenishment for 21 Locations
Brafasco’s next-day promise means that efficiently managing inventory for replenishment of the retail stores is critical. With Microsoft GP, Brafasco set up a min-max inventory model that set predefined tolerances for the minimum and maximum amount of each item to be held in inventory. Every hour, Microsoft GP collects sales information from each of the 21 stores and compares it to available inventory. SQL scripts run against the data stored in SQL Server 2000 to identify inventory needs and compare them to the stock available at the main warehouse.
If inventory is not available or if stock falls below predefined tolerances, Microsoft GP automatically generates SmartList views so that the buyer can act on the recommendation or make changes as necessary. Brafasco acts quickly to replace inventory, even buying from competitors in order to fulfill its customer promise of next-day delivery. Brafasco also is developing SmartList view notification back to sales representatives when an order cannot be delivered to the branch by the promised date.
Regarding the customizations, Jon Stauffer, Unified Business Solutions Consulting Partner and Project Manager, says, “Because it’s built on Microsoft SQL Server, if you understand the Microsoft GP schema, there’s nothing you can’t automate.”
Increased Productivity in the Warehouse
When inventory is available to fulfill branch needs, a transfer batch is created that allocates inventory to the specific location. Then customized Crystal Reports create picking slips that are grouped by product “family” for efficient retrieval. Once inventory is received at the stores, the transfer batches are posted and Microsoft GP matches products to orders, cross-docking allocated items. With cross-docked products staged for the next day, workers have less work to do replacing inventory on the shelves.
Such improvements have resulted in more stable inventory levels and better inventory turns as well as increased productivity in the warehouse. As a result, Brafasco is considering condensing one warehouse shift—ending it at 9:00 P.M. instead of midnight—and has been able to open several new branches without a subsequent increase in warehouse staff.
Flexible, Integrated POS Processes
At the storefront, sales representatives can now look up items in Microsoft GP, price them, and then print sales orders right at the counter. Brafasco originally considered a third-party POS system, but decided that running Microsoft GP Sales Order Processing would meet the retail outlets’ needs—connecting sales, inventory, and purchasing data to replenish inventory efficiently and meet delivery promises.
To help sales representatives use the system effectively, Unified Business Solutions developed a customized search system that helps locate inventory information more quickly—important when a customer is waiting at the sales counter. Brafasco sells thousands of small parts, similar in description except for one or two attributes such as size or material. Descriptions of products are important for identifying and pricing the correct item. Unified Business Solutions enhanced Microsoft GP search capabilities with a custom lookup screen that displays a series of attribute fields for searching. For example, a sales representative might need to price a stainless steel quarter-inch hex screw, 2.5 inches in length. In addition to the full description, each attribute of the item is indexed and searchable. A search for any attribute retrieves multiple variants in a list that can be selected and inserted into the sales order quickly and easily.
Tight Integration with Third-Party Business Applications
In addition to integrating key information from sales, purchasing, and inventory management, Unified Business Solutions also integrated Microsoft GP with SOP Auto Invoice from Blue Moon Industries to automatically transfer, post, and print invoices for completed orders every night after business hours. This streamlines the invoicing process by eliminating manual approval and transfer requirements. Integration with GFI FAXmaker for Networks/SMTP, a fax server application, enabled office workers to automatically fax Microsoft GP purchase orders, statements, and invoices, reducing delays associated with traditional mail.
Brafasco’s aggressive growth strategy sees the company adding eight locations during the next eight months and then increasing again to 100 locations several years later. Implementing efficient, automated systems that can grow with the business is critical to that success. Already handling record sales, the Brafasco team is confident that with the help of Unified Business Solutions, Microsoft GP, and Microsoft technologies will help the company to meet the many challenges ahead.
