INTEGRATED SUPPLY
Your Worst Work Nightmare
By Phil Pope: General Manager, Integrated Services Group & National Accounts
Apr 7, 2008 - 7:36:13 AM

The prize winning nightmare is probably finding out your new boss is the kid down the street you used to tease mercilessly when you were 12 years old. But, let me tell you about the runner-up. It is a whole lot more likely.

The second worst nightmare on the job is needing some obscure repair part for a critical machine and not being able to find it, even though you know you have one. And you better have one, because the machine that has just gone kah-dunk is old, probably obsolete, and you are not really sure who made it, when or where. So calling up your local industrial distributor finding that he has a shiny new whatzit on the shelf is pretty unlikely.

Sure, you can find a part somewhere – once you figure out what you need and then have the time and energy to go looking for it.

But, right now, work is backing up. Lost production – and the money that it represents – is growing ever more significant. And, that guy whose name is on the bottom of your paycheck is looking at you with ever less affection.

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If you are lucky, this is when you wake up. If you aren’t, this is when you realize that you aren’t asleep. You are in deep doo-doo.

Allow me to introduce myself and my organization. We are the Integrated Services Group (ISG) of IBT. And our job is to prevent this kind of nightmare from ever catching up to you through integrated supply chain and MRO.

We do it with preventive medicine. Our many ounces of prevention are worth tons of cure.

We start by getting control of what you have on hand. So, if you need it later, we know and you know exactly where it is.

And, equally important, if it something you are never going to need, we get it off your shelf and turn it in to as much cash or asset value as we can.

That is only the beginning. Because we also deal with your other real nightmare: how to take control and keep control of all the other “stuff” you have on hand.

We have come into some factories and been amazed to find out that the big pile of miscellaneous junk in the corner was actually their tool crib.

In one case, it took a bunch of work but when we were done, the floor was so clean you could eat off of it.

Most people aren’t in that bad of shape. But very few busy plants take the time to keep the back room in the shape it should be. But, we not only take the time, we take pride in doing it.

We know we can make the supply chain that supports your place, especially in MRO, work like a finely oiled machine. And that machine won’t shoot craps on you in the middle of your busiest season.