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Chase & Sons has been delivering innovative engineered products and processes to the wire and cable industry for over 50 years. They supply General Cable with specialty tapes. In the past, Chase & Sons would allocate resources for 'emergency handling' of orders which took time away from planning and other more strategic functions.
Supply Chain Connect designed, deployed and integrated a private supply hub solution for General Cable using their hosted software. Chase & Sons was immediately connected to the Private Supply Hub, also allowing them to operate Supplier Managed Inventory (SMI) programs. Benefits for Chase & Sons include realtime inventory and demand visibility, alleviating unexpected last minute orders and access to information on demand.
Chase & Sons manufactures specialty tapes and compounds for various segments of the wire and cable industry. As a strategic and long-term supplier to General Cable, the world's third largest cable manufacturer, Chase & Sons was encouraged by General Cable to become the first of their suppliers to be adopted on Supply Chain Connect’s private supply hub, a unique software and managed service solution for supply chain management.
General Cable adopted Supply Chain Connect's private supply hub solution because it uniquely enables them to target and achieve impressive financial and operating goals. These goals include the reduction in raw material inventory by 50% over 3 years, the doubling of inventory turns, and the complete elimination of EDI costs with suppliers. Additionally, Supply Chain Connect enables General Cable to reduce costs associated with the manual processing of all traditional transaction documents associated with the purchasing process. (Please read our separate case study General Cable Gets Connected for further details).
General Cable's suppliers such as Chase also benefit substantially from the initiative by connecting to their private supply hub. Realtime inventory and demand visibility allows Chase & Sons to lower manufacturing and transportation costs by alleviating unexpected last minute orders. The Supply Chain Connect technology also allows Chase to operate Supplier Managed Inventory (SMI) programs.
In the past, Chase & Sons would allocate resources for 'emergency handling' of orders which took time away from planning and other more strategic functions. By using the private supply hub with General Cable, Chase & Sons can now see real-time information relating to inventory for over 650 items at 11 General Cable plants and can better allocate employee resources. As Steve Navarette, Senior Account Manager at Chase & Sons explains, "The most important thing is getting real-time information on our customers' inventory.
Visibility to the product reduces the number of emergency calls for stock outs and allows us to plan better. Now we see inventory starting to decline and can plan better. We are not blindsided with surprise orders. The reduction in phone calls and emergency orders was significant."
The on demand visibility that Chase now has into inventory and planning positions at the various General Cable facilities has enabled them to reduce stock-outs. Chase & Sons has also seen an increase in order fulfilment accuracy, as Navarette continues, "Improved information flow from the various plants helps reduce order entry errors. Chase deals with so many plants that there are lots of transactions and it became cumbersome. Before it was email, spreadsheets, phone, fax, etc. from all eleven plants. Now, with Supply Chain Connect, we see the same format for every order. We can monitor their inventory at our convenience. I can look at it even when I am on the road. Using Supply Chain Connect increases the efficiency and consistency of the information flow."
From General Cable's point of view, they have seen improved on-time delivery rate and increased order fulfilment accuracy from having Chase & Sons join their private supply hub deployed by Supply Chain Connect. According to Mark Smith, VP Sourcing and Transportation for General Cable, "This initiative is a top priority for us. It is enabling us to cut substantial costs and inefficiencies from our supply chain and stay competitive in a tough market. We couldn't do this without Supply Chain Connect's superb private supplier hub solution and we couldn't do this without the support of strategic suppliers like Chase & Sons, who are helping to make ours the industry's most efficient supply chain. "
When asked if Supply Chain Connect's software and managed services have helped to improve the customer relationship with General Cable, Navarette responded, "Absolutely. As we get more involved with their inventory we become more of an asset to them."
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