Brymec

Challenge

Following a period of continued growth, the leading distributor has undergone a significant transformation over the last 2 years. To support the introduction of its growing range of products and a more global sourcing strategy, the business consolidated its warehouses to establish a purpose-built centralised distribution centre.

In addition to developing its supply chain, Brymec also implemented a new Microsoft Business Central ERP system along with a new CRM.
Dale Gardiner, Commercial Director at Brymec, highlights: “Our customers cannot afford to compromise on essential deadlines and neither can we. Therefore, we must continue to improve every area of our business.”

To unify the business’ end-to-end operation and further enrich the functionality of the new IT infrastructure, Brymec took the strategic decision to implement Slimstock’s inventory optimisation solution, Slim4.

Project Scope

Over the last 40 years, Brymec has established itself as a critical supply chain partner to the building services industry. With over 6000 active product lines, the business offers an extensive range of essential HVAC and industrial components.

To ensure its customer’s projects are completed on time and within budget, Brymec sets the industry standard in service and product availability. Committed to attaining further operational performance improvements, Brymec joined forces with Slimstock to optimise its supply chain processes.

Solutions

Strategic Sourcing

As Brymec’s product offering continues to grow, the business has partnered with a range of suppliers in the UK and overseas: “With a more global supplier base, our lead-times have gone from being measured in days to months. As a consequence, our old approach to inventory management was no longer sufficient to plan for such a broad horizon.”

Following the successful implementation of Slim4, the planning team were able to anticipate future demand with greater confidence. “Slim4 takes into account seasonality, product lifecycles and other complex factors to provide robust demand insights. As a result, we now have much greater transparency over our future inventory requirements,” observes Dale.

Highlighting how robust forecasting has helped the sourcing team to gain a tighter grip on inventory levels, Dale goes on to comment: “In the short time we have been using Slim4, our stock turn has already increased by over 10%. Given that this has been achieved alongside improving product availability, this is a huge competitive advantage.”

Strategic mindset

During the project, Slimstock’s consultants worked closely with the team at Brymec to develop more proactive supply chain processes.
“This project was about more than just implementing a more advanced tool for inventory management. To achieve long-term results, we needed to change the mindset of the sourcing team,” states Dale.

Explaining how business is now better positioned to anticipate inventory issues, Dale reports: “Thanks to the management by exception principles of Slim4, we can take swift action to resolve any immediate inventory issues. However, with the dynamic ABC functionality in Slim4, our people can also focus their time on optimising our most important products.”

“We are no longer work reactively. By utilising all of the data available, we can now make more informed inventory decisions. As a result, we have increased service levels on our top-performing lines to 99.6%,” adds the commercial director.

Next steps

To unlock further opportunities for optimisation, the sourcing team are now working hard to streamline other areas of Brymec’s operation: “With a solid foundation in place, our focus is now on improving supply chain resilience. For example, we are already starting to explore how we can use Slim4 to collaborate more effectively with our suppliers.”

Pleased with the results so far, the Commercial Director goes on to conclude: “With Slimstock as our long-term partner for inventory optimisation, I am confident that we are on the right path to achieve our long-term objective of further profitable growth.”