CASE STUDY | Improved On-Time Delivery
Nice I HySecurity Improves On-Time Delivery with 83 Percent Shortage Reduction in 3 Months
“LeanDNA is my partner, my decider. It's very clear and concise. The only reason I have to go into our ERP now is if there's an issue with the way the order was put in.”
—Mike, Senior Buyer
About Nice I Hysecruity
Nice I Hysecurity, the gate and barrier division of Nice North America, is a worldwide recognized industry leader of automated gate and perimeter security solutions. The Nice brand features residential and commercial gate operators, from elegant linear actuators to refined swing gate operators. The HySecurity brand provides high-quality, ultra-reliable industrial gate operators and crash-rated, Hostile Vehicle Mitigation (HVM) vehicle barriers designed to secure and protect critical infrastructure and facilities.
Nice North America headquarters and the HySecurity manufacturing facility is located 20 minutes south of Seattle, in Kent, WA. The organization has additional warehouses and manufacturing facilities in Phoenix, AZ; Chicago, IL; and Montreal, QC, Canada.
The Challenge
With a focus on reliability and customer service, the Nice | HySecurity team understood the importance of exceeding customers’ expectations with on-time delivery. But a lack of visibility into half of their inventory hindered supply chain and operations teams from understanding production needs for make-to-order and make-to-stock items. With only their ERP system (Sage MAS 100), the team had no way to reliably calculate how changes in demand impacted inventory requirements.
Buyers spent hours creating and maintaining static spreadsheets, manually searching for parts shortages in their systems, and updating complex Excel calculations. Meanwhile, managers struggled to see shortages before they impacted production and customer deliveries, relying solely on buyer managed spreadsheets to understand inventory. They couldn’t direct buyers on which issues to prioritize.
Seeking to improve on-time delivery, the team built a homegrown solution to manage inventory, but inaccurate calculations and an inefficient workflow impeded progress in tackling shortages. Nice | HySecurity needed a way to gain total visibility into inventory operations, automate key reports, and build an agile inventory optimization engine so they could get ahead of shortages
“We didn't have a single holistic solution to understand production, so we tried creating some homegrown reports. We tried to create a shortage report and forecasting report, but we couldn’t get the calculations to work. Now LeanDNA provides the correct calculations for us, every time.”
—Brandon Mambelli, VP of Operations
The Results
Nice | HySecurity partnered with LeanDNA in January 2019. After an eight-week implementation, the team gained total visibility into inventory operations and could understand their current and projected inventory levels. They gained access to automated Shortage, Line of Balance, and PFEP reports, saving them the manual effort of trying to manage this data in spreadsheets. These reports, along with LeanDNA’s inventory optimization recommendations, helped buyers and their managers surface and tackle shortage issues before production was negatively impacted. Within two weeks of use, Nice | HySecurity saw a significant reduction in shortages, and within the first quarter of usage, the company achieved an 83 percent shortage reduction.
Additionally, LeanDNA equipped Nice | HySecurity to continuously optimize inventory levels amid fluctuating demand. LeanDNA’s automated recommendations enabled them to reduce purchased inventory by 20 percent in one quarter and sustain these results over time–freeing up cash in their supply chain and improving their confidence in forecasting inventory levels. The team reinvested the saved capital in new product development.
Nice | HySecurity improved on-time delivery results as well, achieving over a 90 percent customer on-time delivery rate since LeanDNA’s implementation, breaking 99 percent in some months. With consistent on-time delivery, the Nice | HySecurity supply chain team took their brand promise of reliability to the next level.
With LeanDNA now at the core of their inventory processes, the Nice | HySecurity team gained total visibility into their current and projected inventory levels and understood clear priorities to act on impactful shortages. As a result, they were able to free up cash in their supply chain, improve on-time delivery, and delight their customers. With renewed confidence in data and clarity into priorities, the procurement team is confident they can optimize inventory levels and keep growing their business—no matter how much demand changes.
“Purchasing inventory correctly and reducing excess inventory ultimately frees up cash for us. LeanDNA not only helps us plan our capital month-over-month, but also has enhanced reporting tools to help us provide better information and inventory predictions to our headquarters.”
—Brandon Mambelli, VP of Operations
Global Manufacturer
83% shortage reduction in 3 months
20% purchased inventory reduction in 3 months
90%+ customer on-time delivery since implementation
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