The Client
For nearly three decades, Ace Air Conditioning & Heating Service has provided heating and air conditioning repair service in and around Fairfax, Virginia. Today, Ace employs 18 team members who service heating and air conditioning units. At its headquarters, the company maintains a warehouse where it stocks the replacement parts its repair technicians need on the job.
The Challenge
With hundreds of items on its warehouse shelves, Ace’s management tried spreadsheets to track the quantities on hand of individual parts, an effort which proved to be ineffective. As a result, the company unexpectedly ran out of particular items, forcing technicians to make time-consuming trips to a regional supply depot. Besides the drive time and added expenses, service technicians wasted time waiting in line to receive the correct parts, leaving customers waiting and wondering when their service technician would return to complete the job.
The Solution
Gary Kincheloe, Owner of Ace, began searching for a solution. After trying an inventory management product that did not fulfill his needs, Kincheloe purchased Wasp’s inventory management solution. Ace now uses Wasp’s inventory solution to manage its parts inventory and keep an accurate count of items in stock.
Using a Wasp mobile computer, Ace's staff can quickly update inventory counts by scanning the barcodes on replacement parts as they are received. Then, when service technicians take parts from the warehouse for a job, the inventory items are checked out to them. Unlike the old spreadsheet approach, scanning barcodes is easy, accurate, and avoids placing any additional burden on technicians.
The Result
The company immediately began to see results. Kincheloe uses Wasp’s inventory software to create reorder reports, which inform him when stock becomes low for a particular item and provide recommended reorder quantities. Further, Kincheloe can look at inventory reports to gain insight into which items are selling and which are not. This enables him to adjust his inventory, ensuring he has in-demand items on hand.
“This saves a lot of time and helps me keep the right quantity and right stock in my warehouse,” Kincheloe said. “As a result, we simply don’t run out of parts. I don’t have to pay my techs for the time they spend traveling to the supply depot and waiting for help. Rather, I pay them for the high value work of repairing air conditioning and heating units.”
In the past, Ace’s technicians spent approximately 20 hours a week obtaining parts that were not in the warehouse. These employees earn an average of $40 per hour. Using Wasp's inventory management software, Ace has virtually eliminated this problem and saves approximately $800 per week, or more than $40,000 per year. In addition, Ace can now accommodate additional service calls during the 20 hours technicians used to travel to and from the supply depot.
“The product paid for itself in three weeks,” Kinchloe said. “Not only did I save money, I’m able to make more money without incurring the fixed costs of additional technicians. As a business owner, I’m pleased to have found a solution that positively impacts both my bottom and top lines.”
In addition, Kincheloe now has greater visibility into the quantity of each part he uses each month. He can use this information to negotiate better prices for inventory items. Best of all, customer service has improved since technicians are able to immediately find the parts they need to complete a job more quickly.
