by Natalie Edwards

Asset Engineering, Mt Maunganui – Success Story

 

‘No one wants to monitor anything; we are all too busy doing our own thing in a business.'

 

Rob from Asset Engineering tells us how QUICKSTOCK has tightened up how the guys use consumables and provided some big cost savings to the company.

Tell us about Asset Engineering

 

Asset Engineering — Pete and I formed it about seven years ago. We've gone from two guys to 20 staff now.

 

We cover all bases in the building industry, from secondary structural steel, steel portals, smaller steel structures, right through to the finishing stages. We do a lot of architectural, good-looking stuff on buildings. And then we also do mechanical. So we do a lot of engineering, service, waste management, Enviro New Zealand, Tui Fertilisers — companies like that.

 

Predominantly in the Bay, but we have worked from Christchurch right up to Auckland. We are branching out all the time, looking for new avenues. And we’ve got a good reputation around the Bay. People do stand up and watch us, and see what we're up to.

 

TruckBuild NZ - TylerTruckBuild NZ - Tyler

HOW DID YOU MANAGE CONSUMABLE INVENTORY BEFORE QUICKSTOCK?

 

Before QUICKSTOCK came along we were running a pretty loose system where you run out, you'd send someone up the road to the engineering supplies, they get the consumables and come back.

And so, you know, they run out again, send them up the road again.

 

So no one was actually taking control. We weren't doing any price checking — very, very time consuming.

 

 

You know, obviously someone's got to drop their job or what they were doing. And especially nowadays with traffic flow, we could be losing an hour. That’s lost revenue — the travel costs, the time. They’ll be stopping for a pie somewhere. Pie and a drink somewhere, you know. Always an excuse why they stopped, why it took so long. But yeah, not a good system.

 

WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO USE QUICKSTOCK?

 

We decided to go with QUICKSTOCK because we just wanted a one-stop shop where we weren’t shopping around. We knew that we were getting value for money. There was no lost time. It was just an easy solution for us.

HOW DOES THE QUICKSTOCK SYSTEM WORK FOR YOU?

 

So how QUICKSTOCK works for us is:

  • We have lockable cabinets.
  • We do have a storeman - he's the one that has the key. He's on site all the time.
  • The guys have to come to him to actually get any consumables out of there.

It's a really good way of gauging or monitoring the PPE gear that's going out.

 

A lot of consumables we can actually put back into the system — drill bits, bits and pieces like that. So it's actually really tightening up on the way that all these guys use our consumables.

 

TruckBuild NZ - QUICKSTOCK in the workshopTruckBuild NZ - QUICKSTOCK in the workshop

The guys who replenish the stock come in once a month. They know exactly what consumables we're using. They'll stock them up to the levels that we require. If they see that we're using more consumables in one area, they’ll inform us, we’ll have a look at it, and then most likely bump those or decrease levels where we’re not using those consumables.

 

Financially, it's been a big improvement. It's a big gain. And that's what it's all about — saving costs in areas where we need to.

So it's worked really really well for us.

 

WOULD YOU RECOMMEND THE QUICKSTOCK SOLUTION TO OTHER ENGINEERING COMPANIES?

 

I would definitely recommend QUICKSTOCK to other engineering companies. No one wants to monitor anything. We are all too busy doing our own thing in a business. So having QUICKSTOCK come in, the guys replenish our stocks every month — is just a blessing. We get a printout of our financials. It keeps the costs down to a minimum. We can gauge everything that we need. It's the best solution.

 

The last thing I'd like to say is that QUICKSTOCK and Euromarc have been really, really good to us. I mean, they've given us value for money; always there on call when we need them, any questions. And yeah, we just have really really good service from them. Really happy. So yeah, I recommend them to everyone.