Optimized parts ordering and efficient, on-time delivery play a significant role in a vehicle’s uptime. Better access to parts can benefit both independent shops and dealers alike. After all, many fleets will go to the source when obtaining parts for vehicle service and repairs. Joe Kory, senior vice president, parts, for Navistar, discusses recent advancements in access and ordering that have been made to Navistar’s parts distribution and service networks.
Transcription of interview:
Erica Schueller, Fleet Maintenance: Welcome to VSP News: Uptime Update. I am your host Erica Schueller, Editor-in-Chief of Fleet Maintenance magazine, covering all maintenance, all vehicle classes, all management, all the time.
Optimized parts ordering and efficient, on-time delivery play a significant role in a vehicle’s uptime. Better access to parts can benefit both independent shops and dealers alike. After all, many fleets will go to the source when obtaining parts for vehicle service and repairs. Navistar is looking to address these needs with a number of recent announcements.
I spoke with Josef Kory, Senior Vice President, Parts, for Navistar. We discussed recent advancements in access and ordering that have been made to Navistar’s parts distribution network.
Joe Kory, Navistar: To make ourselves easier to do business with for our customers, we’re opening up a new parts distribution center in Memphis. This will be our 10th North American PDC [parts distribution center], all designed to get parts closer to our customers and ready for repairs when they’re needed.
This facility will be about 300,000 square feet, located close to the FedEx hub in Memphis, and will allow us to take emergency orders from our customers up until 11 PM that night, and still get them delivered for early-morning delivery the next day. This will allow us to reach about 95 percent of our customers across the U.S. and Canada out of this distribution center.
Our distribution centers are now also open 24/7. We’re adding more dealers to dedicated delivery, we now have almost 80 percent of our dealers on dedicated delivery, which means they can place orders late in the day. We can get those shipped and delivered overnight, and those parts are sitting there waiting for them when they come in in the morning.
Schueller, Fleet Maintenance: Optimizing parts management and inventory are key to ensuring access to the right part when it's needed – whether at the dealer level, or for an independent service provider working with a dealer. What type of features are key to an efficient parts inventory management system? And, what has Navistar done to enhance this system? Kory shares more.
Kory, Navistar: We know the key to uptime is not necessarily having the parts on the shelves of our distribution centers, but having the parts on the dealer's shelves, so that when that truck comes in for repair, the [parts] are ready, waiting and able to be applied to that repairs as quickly as possible.
To ensure we have the right parts on the shelf, we’re currently expanding our retail inventory management system with our dealers, what we call DIA (dealer inventory alliance). This ensures we have more breadth of parts on the shelves and less depth. We know we can get those parts to the dealer quickly, we need to make sure we have more of those needed parts on the shelves when the truck customer comes in.
Our DIA system not only will take forecast from historical usage of parts, we’re also using predictive analytics to understand what parts are going to be needed. We’ll also use our OnCommand [vehicle telematics] system to understand what fault codes are going off on trucks and ensure we have the right parts where they’re needed, based on the locations of trucks throughout North America.
Schueller, Fleet Maintenance: It’s not just parts. Access to an established and comprehensive service network is critical to optimizing vehicle uptime for fleets. Kory talks about how Navistar has recently expanded its service network through a partnership with Love’s Travel Stops.
Kory, Navistar: We know how important it is to offer our customers options when getting their trucks serviced. We just announced a partnership with Love’s Travel Stops that adds over 315 new service locations to our International service network.
Those service locations will also be authorized to do light warranty repairs and other vehicle repairs. It really supplements the International dealer network, offering our customers more options. It will also add 1,000 technicians to our service network as well.
It really improves our capabilities and allows our customers to have a choice at any one of our 700-plus International dealers, or these 315 Love’s or SpeedCo locations, to take their trucks in for service. It will really help us on the quick same-day type of repairs, where we don’t want to have these trucks sit at a dealership and wait for other trucks that are in front of them for more extensive repairs. For less than three-hour warranty repairs, customers can get in and out.
It also frees up capacity at our dealers themselves to work on the more sophisticated repairs as well.
Schueller, Fleet Maintenance: What continuing trends can we anticipate with regard to parts inventory and ordering, to further optimize vehicle service in the future? Kory shares more.
Kory, Navistar: We know our customers’ expectations get higher and higher in terms of parts availability and wanting to move service quickly. One of the things we’re seeing is we need to continue to expand our footprint and continue to get parts closer to customers. That’s something we’ll be working on as a network.
We also will continue to refine our dealer inventory systems, continue to make sure we have the right types of parts on the shelves. You’ll see more advanced analytics and algorithms being used to help predictive stocking.
What we’ll see over time is more scheduled maintenance and repairs that keep trucks up and running, rather than waiting until something fails on a vehicle.
Another trend that we’re seeing, which we see everywhere these days is that customers want access to ordering parts online. We continue to develop our ecommerce systems, again to make ourselves easier to do business with and satisfy those customers who don’t necessarily want to pick up the phone or come into a dealership to order parts, they’ll want to use an ecommerce system that gives them search capabilities and all the functionality they need to take care of their business online.
Schueller, Fleet Maintenance: If you’d like more details on these recent announcements from Navistar, please go to the link below.
That’s it for this week’s episode! Thank you for tuning in to VSP News Uptime Update, I’m your host Erica Schueller.
Until our next broadcast, keep up with this, and other industry topics, by visiting us online at VehicleServicePros.com.
Find more details on recent announcements from Navistar.
