Customer Success
Steel and Pipe Supply Success with GAINS
Best in Class Customer Service and Product Availability through Optimized Inventory Levels
- Headquartered in Manhattan, Kansas
- Privately held carbon steel distributor
- Deep inventory portfolio of diverse carbon steel products
- ERP: SAP
“With GAINS, we’ve been able to maintain our excellent service to our customers while getting better at managing our working capital. We have outperformed our peers on that metric in many instances.”
CEO Steel and Pipe Supply
Company Overview
Driven by a commitment to put the customer first, Steel and Pipe Supply (SPS), has built a reputation of integrity, innovation, service excellence, and unmatched product availability. Steel Pipe and Supply offers the industry’s most comprehensive range and deepest inventory of carbon steel products.
Challenges
SPS built a reputation on its superior product availability, customer service, and just-in-time delivery. Customers count on SPS to provide them with the goods essential to their work. Supply chain disruptions coupled with wild price fluctuations made sourcing materials increasingly difficult. To manage the unprecedented level of market volatility, SPS needed an easy-to-use yet sophisticated solution with more advanced capabilities than its ERP system. Steel and Pipe Supply turned to GAINS to transform its supply chain performance, having seen a track record of success with other industrial distributors.
Exceeding the Expectations of Discerning Customers
SPS chose GAINS to leverage its expertise in optimizing supply chain performance to boost customer service while considering a multitude of market and operational constraints. GAINS quickly identified numerous optimization opportunities throughout the supply chain, including the need for Multi-Echelon Inventory Optimization and automated replenishment planning. GAINS was able to intelligently determine optimal service levels and stocking policies for each SKU by location. The GAINS platform identified a gap in the ability to strategically adjust inventory on most SKUs vs. the fixed and limited policies supported by the ERP system. Using advanced predictive and simulation techniques, quantities of key products were increased to prevent stockouts or the need to expedite while other SKUs could be reduced. The outcome was tangible, supporting profitability goals and sustaining customer service levels while reducing costs and increasing business process efficiency.
GAINS exception-based workflows enabled SPS buyers and planners to prioritize their efforts, automating numerous steps and reducing the time required to place orders. This automation fueled by optimized order size and frequency freed up valuable time for planners to deal with outliers, larger-impact issues, and customer service.
With GAINS the SPS team was able to:
- Reduce inventory costs by 66%
- Maintain SPS’ reputation as the “supplier with everything”
- Increase customer order fill rates while reducing expediting costs
- Improve inventory turnover while lowering total inventory investment
- Proactively manage upturns and downturns in market demand
- Establish a resilient supply chain foundation for business growth