Stubs in an ice cream tub

It boggles the mind just how far-fetched the solutions used by some businesses — and the MRO suppliers who help them — are. Here’s a story to prove my point.

Tools vanish without a trace

A few years ago, I worked for a supplier of technical products, tools and protective equipment. A brewery contacted us as their tools kept going missing, which was costing them time and money. Their question was this: “How do we keep track of who’s working with which tools?”

Paper slips at the front desk

At the front desk of the technical warehouse, my eyes were drawn to what was once an ice cream tub, now brimming with crumpled-up paper slips. Next to the tub, there was a pre-printed stack of slips for staff to fill in their name, surname, item number, the amount of items they needed and their department.
Things soon went from bad to worse. The project manager took us on a tour of the technical warehouse, which contained a hotchpotch of systems: shelves with trays and locked double-door cupboards. Eventually, we arrived at our destination: small, locked rooms containing the tools in question. Inside, shelves were stacked with toolboxes, cable reels and torque wrenches. Hooks carried hoisting chains and belts, and best of all: the SAP number was hand-written onto every item, or onto a label stuck the item.

Just the tools – really?!

Shortly afterwards, the project manager was called away to deal with an issue elsewhere, and I was left with all kinds of questions spinning around my head. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to include the other product groups in the warehouse in our analysis of the rental cost, implementation time and SAP integration? Apparently not: a few weeks later, all I received was a list of tools.

Vending machines in different shapes and sizes

Some time later, we arrived back at the business to present our solution for their tools. We were greeted by a different project manager at the entrance to the bottling plant. Behind him, there were three vending machines: one for gloves and one for glasses, and one from a different manufacturer for face masks. By the side of these machines, there were key-operated lockers for different sizes of safety boots.
The project manager spotted the astonished look on our faces and muttered: “Well, I wasn’t aware of this problem, they just asked me to solve the issue with the ‘vanishing’ toolboxes…” Clearly, no one had thought about the other internal customers; they were simply left out in the cold.

Unfortunate temporary fixes

So, how did the story end?

•

• The warehouse staff now collect the toolboxes in person, making a note of who has collected and returned what at which time.
• The items on the shelves in the warehouse are all still there.
• The ‘free’ vending machines from different manufacturers are all still there.
• Every week, a list is generated for the gloves and glasses. This is then used to create a manual SAP order, which is e-mailed to the supplier.
• The same happens for the face masks, but for the other supplier.
• The boots are still kept in key-operated lockers.

A drop in the ocean

Sure, the toolboxes have stopped going missing, but everything else has remained exactly the same. The toolbox solution was just a drop in the ocean, and the rest of the rental tool project was scrapped for cost reasons. And that’s a shame, as the investment would have paid for itself in no time at all.

Is this the worst I’ve ever seen? Definitely not. Is this an isolated case? No, on the contrary. And that’s why I started Convium: to help businesses identify all opportunities to save time and money, and to help them solve these issues in an integrated way.