Success Stories
Invacare Success with GAINS
GAINS Enables Invacare’s Increased Customer Service and Profit Contribution in Down Economy
55% reduction in inventory investment
97% service levels, up from 60%
Invacare Corporation is the world’s leading manufacturer and distributor in the $8.0 billion worldwide market for medical equipment used in the home. The company designs, manufactures, and distributes an extensive line of health care products for the non-acute care environment, including the home health care, retail, and extended care markets. The company sells its products to over 25,000 home health care and medical equipment providers, distributors, and government locations in the United States, Australia, Canada, Europe, New Zealand, and Asia. The company has 5,700 associates and markets its products in 80 countries around the world.
GAINS’ dynamic ability to monitor and analyze every item (SKU) for every Location (SKUL) across the enterprise, in real-time, ensures that a company’s targeted customer service levels are achieved with the greatest contribution to profit. “This enabled Invacare to take its customer service levels from 60% to 97% in a matter of months,” stated Invacare’s Director Inventory Management, “At the same time, GAINS was able to reduce Invacare’s inventory investment 55% and thereby maintain their strong market share, even during a deep recession.”
“What is incredible is that prior to installing GAINS, using what we thought was a leading edge tool associated with our ERP system, we were under the perception that the only way to have higher customer service levels, measured as complete order to customer request date, was to increase inventory and get a better forecast. What a surprise to learn that with GAINS for our medical equipment supply chain, you don’t need the extra inventory, and profit optimized inventory policies are more powerful than a better forecast.”
Medical Equipment Supply Chain
“Historically in this business the quality of our product and the depth of our product line kept us as the industry leader. As competition advanced in its product quality and their breadth of product line, we needed to focus on improving our operational effectiveness and customer service levels to ensure we kept are leadership position. The tools provided by our ERP solution and our traditional demand planning and forecasting approach was not up to the task of building world class customer service levels. GAINS stepped in to fill that bill.”
– Director Inventory Management
