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Monster Truck Madness: From Inventory Chaos to Inventory Control

Driving monster trucks means being comfortable in chaos and uncertainty, but building monster trucks requires mastering the chaos of inventory control and being certain of what you have and don’t have in stock. Racesource Inc., a leader in the manufacture of vehicle parts and components for the racing and monster truck industries, was on a bumpy course of inventory control with Excel before they adopted a smooth inventory tracking system. Racesource manufactures and distributes high quality vehicle parts and components for the racing industry and they are part of the team that maintains the monster trucks Grave Digger and El Toro Loco. While they started out managing their inventory with Excel, as they have quickly grown they’ve needed to find a better inventory control system.

3 Ways Excel Prevented Racesource from Accelerating Its Growth

For Racesourse, Excel was clunky, time consuming, and error ridden, especially as the quantity of inventory items they needed to track grew. More importantly, Excel was unable to handle their needs, it can’t track “assemblies” - multiple items that can be used separately but when brought together make up one item/asset - which are a big part of Racesource’s business.

1. Time consuming - entering data manually into an Excel spreadsheet takes time and employees, Racesource had to spend at least one hour per week manually entering in data.
2. Error ridden - the simple reality of manual data entry is that there will be mistakes and with Excel it can be hard to catch small mistakes before they cause big problems.
3. Unable to track assemblies - Excel was unable to easily track assemblies and this meant Racesource was ordering or manufacturing items when they didn’t need them.

Case Study: Making the Switch from Excel Chaos to Inventory Control

As Racesource continued growing it became clear to Paul Huffaker, Vice President, that Excel was no longer working for their inventory management. It was taking at least one hour a week to update inventory manually on the Excel sheet. Money was being wasted ordering or manufacturing parts that weren’t needed. And it was impossible for Racesource to track individual items as the assembly they were part of.

Inventory Control Software Helps Monster Truck

Huffaker explains, “Maintaining an accurate inventory count in Excel was time consuming and error ridden.” Huffaker adds, “Often I would reorder or manufacture parts I already had simply because I didn’t know I had them, which was an unnecessary cost. And with many smaller items being combined into an assembly, I needed a system that could use the existing UPC codes to track the individual item as well as the assembly.” Huffaker evaluated a number of possible solutions before choosing Wasp Barcode Technologies’ Inventory Control. He saw that with Inventory Control it provided a barcoded tracking system that could effectively manage assemblies and work with existing UPC codes. The key selling point for Huffaker was that Wasp offered a free, downloadable trial of the system so he could see how it would work specifically for their business.

3 Benefits of an Effective Inventory Management System

1. Effective Labeling - an automated barcode system allows users to clearly label all their inventory using a system they create and control.
2. Barcode scanning - barcode scanning reduces the time spent and the errors made entering inventory data manually.
3. Assembly Tracking - an effective, automated inventory tracking solution will allow a company to keep track of both individual items and the way those items are being combined with other items in assemblies. So you can easily keep an inventory of the item and the assembly it is part of.

Case Study: Implementing Inventory Control for Monster Success

Racesource made the switch to Inventory Control in January 2012 and haven’t looked back. Wasp’s system allowed Racesource to create labels for all inventory. Instead of using the product name as it had before, Racesource was able to implement a numerical system that could identify each item individually along with an accompanying barcode. This did not only improve inventory organization but has also helped improve the billing, manufacturing, and reordering processes. Before adopting Inventory Control, Racesource used to spend an hour a week just tracking parts, with the automated barcode system this is no longer necessary and the company save 52 hours per year. In addition, Racesource has saved about $8,000 a year that used to be spent reordering unnecessary parts. So how does Huffaker feel about the switch to Wasp Barcode Technologies’ Inventory Control system?

"We saw results from implementing Wasp’s Inventory Control on the first day of use”

“We saw results from implementing Wasp’s Inventory Control on the first day of use,” said Huffaker. “Wasp has been professional, well documented, and provided great customer support. My overall experience has been outstanding. I highly recommend Wasp’s solutions to anyone that is responsible for inventory control – regardless of technical experience - because it is so intuitive.” Has your organization been dealing with inventory chaos?  Head over to the Racesource case study to learn more about one of the coolest small businesses in Texas went from chaos to control.