shop management and inventory

hey guys, I'm third generation in the site work and excavation business. I'm 28 now and my uncle and i have been in the shop together for the last 12 years. when i first started working we were the only ones turning wrenches and sorta managing a shop. we both share the duties of ordering parts and keeping track of equipment services and repairs. in the last three years we hired 2 more mechanics and went from about 25 pieces when i started to over 50 now (not including trucks and pick ups) my uncle is stuck in his old school ways and is ready to retire. so i just wanted to see some ideas of what some of you bigger companies do in terms of parts inventory, service scheduling and inventory of small equipment(jumping jacks, plate tampers, generators). right now everything is a calculated mess. i have parts everywhere and then usually ordering parts then finding the same parts weeks later in a buried box.

thanks in advance

wow 50 pieces + trucks with 3_4 techs...must be nice in a way.
I have 58 pieces of heavy equipment,38 trucks, pickups to low boy tractor. A dozen trailers. We have one mechanic!
So managing the shop is pretty easy for me I put things where I want them. Hehe.

Seriously though.
Find some old wall lockers, they help organize smaller parts, farm out nut and bolt bin inventory to a contract. We built enclosed shelves and numbered each to correspond to a machine, store parts and filters in the proper bin.
Service scheduling is cooperative, each crew Foreman turns in Eqpt hours every Friday, the accounting clerk/ office manager enters those times during the day Friday. I schedule services on Monday morning, so I'm always at least a week behind!!!!

thanks for the advice, right now i do have a bolt bin contracted out, thats probably my most organized section of the shop along with a few shelves dedicated to filters. enclosed shelves would definitely help. open shelves collect a lot of dirt and things get thrown onto of things.i love the idea of the hours being turned in. I'm really impressed that you have one mechanic, just wondering if you do everything in-house? my shop is three bays so having me and the two other guys works out well. we do everything in-house including engine and trans rebuilds and repairs get crazy sometimes. maybe my operators just really beat up my equipment because i couldn't do it by myself. today we had 5 pieces in the shop we were working on

small tools jumpin jacks, tampers, saws,pumps, we keep good ones in a c-box, broken ones go on a shelves in shop anything on shelves should have tag with date and whats the issue is. filters we do inventory once a week and place order. spare parts go on shelves with tag for what equip can be used on we own mostly all cat equip some most parts and filters can be used on more then one piece. we have over 100 pieces of iron, about 28 pickups/utility trucks, 2lowboys, 8 triaxles

jimmy, i also have mostly cat. do you do anything with inventory of cat part numbers or just tag it?, also with the small equipment, do you keep track of who takes it out of the box and who returns it?

JLsanzaro, no just tag and shelve it. before we order anything we check shelves. small tools is my nightmare i try my best to keep track of what job it goes to or what forman to it. we have a white board in shop to show where all heavy equip is, last year i got another white board to track small tools it has not solved my problem of knowing where every thing is. but it has help a lot. yes if someones takes small tools their name goes next to it on board. i am also in family own business so i know what you are dealing with, guys mix and match small tools all the time. having all cat equip has to help a little?

We too have mostly cat equipment so that does help. We have more problems out of our pickups and 550 based crew trucks than out of heavy equipment.
we actually have 7 Bays in the shop but not all of them are set up to work from. Two are full length Bays to work on equipment, 1 is set up for machine shop tools, cylinder table, welding table. 1 is storage for small generators , jumping jacks etc. 2 more are dedicated to parts warehousing both for service parts and more pipe fitting s which is our line of work. The seventh is only roofed, that's were our two service trucks reside.

Like you guys, large majority CAT equipment, Ford trucks, 2 lowboys, 7 tri-axle dumps. Front room of Shop has Kimball-Midwest hardware store (standard and metric), shelf with pre-boxed total service kit for every truck, every piece of iron. Service, refill box, put back on shelf. Small stuff is lined up, signed out/in almost like the rental guys. Fuel tanks (On road, off road. gasoline) have fuel counters, clipboards, and are checked daily. Video sweep of all areas, too (for any idiot thief in the night). We are a full service site contractor. Find someone in your company with some true organizational skills and set them to it.

Yair . . . My two bobs worth. For a start I don't quite understand the problem.

We had a slipway ten road hours from town, two trucks a week in the dry, but had a plane in every day.

We kept a basic supply of everything with a basic card system to prompt a reorder when down to three or whatever. Living in civilisation I would let the dealer keep the stock.

In the "wet" (the refit season) we had up to sixty workers on the payroll and all heavy consumables such as steel, bolts, electrodes and so had be positioned on site before the roads closed due to the normal flooding.

Store control has to be ruthless . . . you work for me I will pay you well and look after you but you work to my rules.

All tradies had to have their own hand tools, four inch grinders, half inch drill, extension leads and a 250 amp welder and oxy set. The gear was supplied to them at cost price and could be paid off during the season . . . they break it, drop it over board, or wear it out replacement Makitas were available from the store at cost . . . that arrangement where they have to pay for it solves a lot of the problem with tools.

All consumables were checked out from the store against a job number . . . as too larger tools such as magnetic base drills ten inch grinders drop saws and such. They needed to be checked in at the end of shift or signed over to the next crew. Questions were asked if stuff went missing.

The most important part of store operations in a remote area is to have a simple system to put things back into stock. I frequently found new workers (used to the conventional "big outfit" way of doing things) who would chuck half a pack of electrodes and nuts and bolts and what all overboard after finishing out a job.

They were pretty surprised when I showed them customer invoices that detailed the hours worked, electrode count, grinding wheel count and oxy burn time . . . all they had to do was take the stuff back to the store and it was checked in by my wife.

It ain't hard, you just got to be ruthless and make a simple system work . . . and it still works, my partner is still in business running it the same way and he never took to computers.

Cheers.

well so far I've taken a labor i had working for us on a pipe crew for the last year and i put him to work in the shop with inventory and signing out small equipment. so far its been working out great. i have most of the small equipment and field supplies in a separate garage so he's stays in there and nothing leaves the shop without going through him first. one problem I'm starting to see now that I'm cleaning the shelves and tagging everything is that I'm starting to run out of room. i think I'm gonna have to get some new containers to put some more shelves in. as scrub said you really gotta be ruthless because a lot of guys just don't care

Scrub Puller said:

The most important part of store operations in a remote area is to have a simple system to put things back into stock. I frequently found new workers (used to the conventional "big outfit" way of doing things) who would chuck half a pack of electrodes and nuts and bolts and what all overboard after finishing out a job.

They were pretty surprised when I showed them customer invoices that detailed the hours worked, electrode count, grinding wheel count and oxy burn time . . . all they had to do was take the stuff back to the store and it was checked in by my wife.

It ain't hard, you just got to be ruthless and make a simple system work . . . and it still works, my partner is still in business running it the same way and he never took to computers.

Cheers.

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Wish some of the guys where I work could go to you for training! When done with a project if they had half a bucket of bolts left over they just sit in the back of a truck until they get so rusty they are scrap. Same with electrodes. Have no problem with a guy taking a couple extra bits of hardware out for a project, do it myself to avoid return trip to bolt bins, but no reason they can't return unused stuff. A little of topic bu why when someone takes a rusty bolt he cut off to the bolt bin to make sure he gets the right size does he just toss the rusty one in with the new ones?

Yair . . . kshansen. I believe countless millions of dollars are "wasted" every year in large mines and production facilities such as aluminium smelters because of lax systems written by computer nerds that discourage store returns across the counter . . . other folks on here will have a different take.

Of course a fitter/welder/boilermaker has to take extra hardware and parts out to the site but they must be accounted for and a procedure should exist so they can easily be put back into the system . . . they shouldn't just be written off against the job if not used, someone has to pay for them.

If the welder uses (say) half a sixty dollar packet of rods on a job, leaves the rest laying on the wharf or tosses them overboard and yet charges them out against the job the customer pays thirty dollars more than he should.

If the welder does the right thing and charges half a packet to the job, but tosses the balance overboard or leaves them on the wharf to get wet or run over by the forklift the bloke who pays is me. It doesn't take much of that sort of carry on to eat into profits. Workers have to be educated that paperwork is important and they will be held accountable for waste.

In the course of jobbing work it is amazing how many opened ten pound packets of electrodes ten or a dozen boilermakers/welders can create. For small jobs we issued rods in capped PVC pipe containers and as I mentioned they were charged against the job by count.

The only way to do this is to have a motivated individual working with the tradesmen to ensure proper standards. In our operation that individual was me and I would often show up at midnight on a big job unannounced . . . usually with some cold cans of coke and hamburgers and get the blokes up out of the engine room or whatever and take an unscheduled fifteen minute break and chew the fat.

I found hands on management was hugely important in changing the way fellers work and think.

Cheers.

Scrub Puller said:

Yair . . . kshansen. I believe countless millions of dollars are "wasted" every year in large mines and production facilities such as aluminium smelters because of lax systems written by computer nerds that discourage store returns across the counter . . . other folks on here will have a different take.

Of course a fitter/welder/boilermaker has to take extra hardware and parts out to the site but they must be accounted for and a procedure should exist so they can easily be put back into the system . . . they shouldn't just be written off against the job if not used, someone has to pay for them.

If the welder uses (say) half a sixty dollar packet of rods on a job, leaves the rest laying on the wharf or tosses them overboard and yet charges them out against the job the customer pays thirty dollars more than he should.

If the welder does the right thing and charges half a packet to the job, but tosses the balance overboard or leaves them on the wharf to get wet or run over by the forklift the bloke who pays is me. It doesn't take much of that sort of carry on to eat into profits. Workers have to be educated that paperwork is important and they will be held accountable for waste.

In the course of jobbing work it is amazing how many opened ten pound packets of electrodes ten or a dozen boilermakers/welders can create. For small jobs we issued rods in capped PVC pipe containers and as I mentioned they were charged against the job by count.



Cheers.

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I save every bolt,nut,washer and alot of time wire brush the rusty ones and put them in the right bins. I also will save a half welding rod. This is in my own shop but other places i have worked wouldnt let you take time to save any thing. Most of them didnt want new bolts returned to the bolt bins if you had to many at the end of the day. All most every were i have worked you learned not to wast time picking any thing up after you got a dirty look from a foreman. The last place i worked we were always needing steel to make temporary braces and were told not to use steel that was ordered for prodjects. So we were always hunting for brace material. One time they ordered some steel that was cut to length and it was to short. It all went to the scrap.It wasnt easy for me to watch because most of my stuff is what some one throwed away.

Yair . . . Old Doug. I hear what you say.

It doesn't take many 5/8" grade eight flange bolts picked up and returned to stock to cover the tradesman's time in booking them back in. I can't understand the thinking.

I KNOW it works and systems can be put in place to reduce waste but, like so many things in this old world there is a lack of common sense.

Cheers.

We have a filter room stocked by our supplier weekly. A hose room stocked by an aero quip supplier and a parts room with stuff we use all the time. We have roughly 100 pieces 90 percent being cat. Trucks are all mack. The small stuff like electric pumps compactors and generators all go into a small shop we made out of half of a 40 foot connex box. It all cones in one door gets worked on and stored on shelves in the other half.