How a parts distributor could eliminate site visits and billing disputes.

The situation

A fastener and fitting distributor supplies consignment stock to multiple industrial customers. Under a typical VMI program, a rep visits each site weekly to visually check bins and estimate reorder quantities. Each visit takes one to two hours plus travel.

Consignment stock is invoiced based on the rep's count of what was consumed — a manual process that commonly produces billing disputes. The distributor cannot see what is on each customer's shelf between visits, meaning stock-outs are discovered only when the customer calls.

The challenge

The distributor owns the stock, but it sits on someone else's shelf. The only way to know what has been consumed is to send a rep to count, or trust the customer to report accurately. Neither method is reliable, and both cost time that could be spent winning new business.

Over-stocking ties up working capital. Under-stocking risks losing the account to a competitor who can respond faster. Billing disputes erode customer trust and take hours to resolve each month.

The solution

With scales under every consignment bin at each customer site, each connected to a Gateway on the customer's network, the distributor's team sees every bin at every site from head office through a single cloud portal.

Low-stock alerts notify the warehouse when a customer bin drops below its minimum level. The activity log records actual consumption — what was taken, when, and how many — exportable to CSV.

Expected outcomes

Weekly counting visits are replaced by targeted deliveries triggered by actual stock levels. Reps visit to deliver and maintain the relationship — not to walk shelves and count bins.

Billing disputes become rare because both parties can see the same consumption data. The time previously spent resolving disputes is available for sales. The service level becomes a competitive advantage when winning new VMI accounts.