Republic Services Inc., Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., discovered and eliminated $2 million worth of excess parts inventory using just one element of their Dossier Fleet Maintenance Management system.
Republic Services, Inc. is a leading provider of services in the domestic solid waste industry. The company provides non-hazardous solid waste collection services for approximately 5.5 million residential and commercial customers through 140 collection companies in 21 states. They own or operate 92 transfer stations, 59 solid waste landfills and 32 recycling facilities. Republic operates a fleet of 6,000 heavy trucks and off-road equipment at 200 separate maintenance facilities.
Until 2001, those shops were free to choose their own maintenance software or none at all. But that year, the company selected an enterprise wide maintenance management solution – Dossier from Arsenault Associates, according to Jerry Wickett, vice president, purchasing and maintenance
“Dossier did not replace a company-wide system,” Wickett explained. “We had been using Dossier at some locations in a stand-alone manner. We had other systems in house to choose from as well.”
Republic, he said, took a serious look at three or four systems before making Dossier the company-wide standard. “We needed to have a system to track our costs,” he said.
Ease-of-use was a key factor in the ultimate decision, Wickett said, as was functionality and the ability to provide essential reports. Dossier met Republic’s criteria and more.
An Arsenault consultant suggested Republic take advantage of Dossier’s Obsolete Parts report to manage parts which are stockpiled. One factor in Republic’s choice of Dossier had been its support of bar coding and its ability to track parts inventories. The company had entered parts into Dossier as part of the standardization process; through the use of Dossier’s reporting and analysis tools, Republic found it was carrying over $2 million worth of parts, some that were totally obsolete and others that had not been used in over a year.
Some of the parts were traded among company locations. Some were returned to vendors for credit. “We reduced our parts inventory by about 22 percent,” Wickett explained. “It went from a value of $9 million to $7 million.”
Republic operates Dossier from a corporate-wide server, enabling managers across the country to access virtually every corner of its vast maintenance system.
“One of the pluses was the ability to roll up data into our area, region and corporate structure,” Wickett said. “And our managers can go online and look into any individual location in real time to see what’s going on. I can look at, say, Richmond, California, or any other Republic location.”
“We feel we selected the right company and the right product. Over the years that we’ve been using Dossier, we’ve worked closely with Arsenault,” Wickett said. “They are a solid partner; they listen and respond to our needs and have enhanced the system over time for us. This has helped us to improve our fleet operations and achieve our bottom line business objectives.”