High stock levels are the key for tackling availability issues.
Availability issues, component shortage, extended delivery times and increasing prices. These are some of the bad news that have become commonplace in virtually every industry in the past few years.
At TT Gaskets, we have managed to keep delivery times short by strategically increasing our raw material stock levels. By making anticipatory acquisitions we have been able to guarantee material availability for our customers and have succeeded in keeping our price increases to a minimum.
We began increasing our stock levels during the coronavirus pandemic when we first noticed that several of our raw materials were becoming harder to secure. The strategic purchases paid off, and we have continued similar operations during the war in Ukraine.
Sometimes our customers need gaskets with a notice of only a couple of weeks. At the same time, raw material delivery times may currently be months or even up to a year due to availability issues.
Tackling these problems begins with comprehensive preparation and securing operations by anticipatory stock design. TT Gaskets takes care of our customers’ needs and operational reliability by maintaining a comprehensive raw material library and purchasing raw materials even beyond our needs.
The TT Gaskets warehouse currently features over 3000 raw material titles. With our current stock level, we can secure gasket deliveries for our customers long into the coming year. We are not tied to any specific manufacturers or providers – we can choose the best material for each need from a broad library of products.
We are continuously looking for alternative providers and materials in case a specific raw material becomes completely unavailable. Long-term partnerships generate savings and sustainable product development for our customers.
The next step in our anticipatory activities is harnessing artificial intelligence to generate demand forecasts. We have just finished a pilot project in which we studied combining customer and warehouse data to generate different models on future raw material needs.
– The experiment showed that by combining our customers’ order data with information on raw material consumption and purchases we can optimize our stock levels. We are currently undertaking several system upgrades that will improve the quality of our data, and enable improved interaction between our production, sales and warehouse data, Smart Product Specialist Jaakko Niukkala illustrates.
AI-generated forecasts can improve our customer service and make purchasing easier as we can predict our customers’ coming needs well in advance and make anticipatory acquisitions.
Got an idea on how we could make our service even better? Don’t hesitate to contact us!