Cupertino, CA -- (SBWIRE) -- 07/15/2013 -- Narayan Laksham, President and CEO of Ultriva, Inc., recently discussed the importance of monitoring critical Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). He emphasized they can provide tools to assess the performance of the supply chain. Laksham noted, “Lean quality concepts constantly reference continuous improvement. After a kaizen event and several months pass, there is often fatigue because the notion of continuously looking for better practices (en route to best-practices) is exhausting. Supplier performance data must be collected by ship date, receipt date, by over-shipments (and under-shipments), as well as quality. These data directly impact inventory savings, on-hand inventory and reflect favorably in a Total Spend Report.”
A. O. Smith is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of residential and commercial water heating equipment, offering a comprehensive product line featuring the best-known brands in North America and China. A. O. Smith is also one of the largest manufacturers of electric motors for residential and commercial applications in North America. As part of the company’s kanban loop lean journey they needed to achieve a reduction of inventory and get visibility to supply base as well as realign resources and eliminate stock outs.
Ultriva implemented the supplier Kanban module by establishing a loop from their warehouse back to suppliers. After than initial phase, five major lines were implemented that started pulling directly from the suppliers instead of through the warehouse. The continuous improvement continued when A.O. Smith added the consignment parts in to pull replenishment as well. Currently they are active with 2300 parts across 92 suppliers.
To read the entire blog click to link: http://web.ultriva.com/ultriva-blog/bid/95162/Continuous-Improvement-Metrics-Start-with-Supplier-Performance.
About Ultriva
Ultriva (http://www.ultriva.com) empowers leading industrial, automotive, healthcare, aerospace, and defense businesses to operate more effectively and collaboratively by providing real time visibility and targeted actionable intelligence into inventory and material flows. Ultriva’s cloud-based platform leverages and seamlessly integrates with leading ERP and MRP systems, to deliver an end to end pull based replenishment model for 21st century enterprises such as ATK, CareFusion, Emerson, Ingersoll Rand, McKesson, Magellan, Regal Beloit, Thermo Fisher and more. Ultriva is a privately held, growing software company based in Cupertino, California. Follow Ultriva on Twitter @Ultriva.
Ultriva, Inc.
http://www.ultriva.com
Cynthia Leonard, Marketing Executive
cynthial@ultriva.com
408.961.2495