Company uses technology to hone efficiency

Press, 5 August 1985, Page 30

Company uses technology to hone efficiency

An on-line telex system that will enable staff to order fasteners from anywhere in the world, through the computer terminal at their desks.

Nuts and Bolts and Screws, Ltd, which has always prided itself on its use of the latest technology to improve efficiency, is not resting on its laurels. A direct computer hookup with North Island suppliers of rivets, nuts and screws (collectively known as fasteners in the trade) is also imminent. This will give instant access to sales information — to the point of ordering goods and generating a packing slip into the supplier’s store.

“Stuff will be out the door that they wouldn’t have known they sold until the invoice arrives at the end of the month,” says Nuts and Bolts and Screws’ general manager, Mr Chris Wadeson.

These are just some of the innovations planned in a $248,000 expansion programme for the firm over the next 12 months. Computer capacity will be increased, new vehicles bought, work stations im-

proved, a new store equipped with office and staff training room, and more staff taken on. Not bad for a firm which is celebrating only its ninth birthday this month.

Nuts and Bolts and Screws was formed as a private company to service the fasteners market in a specialised sense. The firm aimed to bring expertise and efficiency to the stodgy image of bolts and fittings merchandising.

What this has translated to is knowledgeable staff using the latest technology and extensive stocks to guarantee fast, reliable delivery. “We are very conscious of a responsibility to the people we deal with,” says Mr Wadeson. All decisions on development are cus-tomer-orientated, and he attributes this and the calibre of the staff as the main reasons for the company’s success.

“We consider ourselves the professionals of the fasteners industry,” he says. This responsibility extends to providing an advisory service to anyone, from the home handy-person to huge engineering firms or the University of Canterbury.

Given the drive for efficiency, the move to computers was inevitable. Mr Wadeson, with the help of a software firm, wrote a programme because nothing suitable was available. This was then fine-tuned with experience. Nuts and Bolts and Screws was the first fasteners company to use an on-line computer system. Since then five other firms have copied it, some coming from Australia to study the example. Three years ago, using

the card stock control system, receipt and invoicing of an average consignment of bolts, say 20 tonnes, took 2% days; now it can be done in 3% hours.

Once logged, the computer keeps track of even the tiniest nut, records bin location, price, pack size, stock on hand, how much of it is already committed through sales, and a sales history of the item. Every main customer, 1938 of them at present, is also given a code number and all trading details are catalogued.

This last facility has enabled Nuts and Bolts and Screws to offer an advance order service, where a firm need only place one order and the goods will be delivered, as needed, every month on the first. Some 50 firms are now automatically supplied in this way and Nuts and Bolts and Screws boasts that in three years it has never let anyone down.

From its Falsgrave Street store, the firm tries to fill as big a proportion of orders as possible from stock. The accepted industry rate is 70 per cent, but the firm is holding at 95 per cent and trying to do better. For the remaining 5 per cent, a result within 24 hours is promised for goods made in New Zealand, along with proven record of obtaining what is required overseas.

All this seems to be appreciated. In the last year Nuts and Bolts and Screws sold 150 million fasteners. July broke all sales records — and an 18-fold increase in trading on that first July nine years ago.

The firm supplies virtually every industry in New Zealand, and is now investi-

gating export deals to Australia. It has been involved in every big energy project built within its lifetime, from Tiwai to Marsden Point and everything inbetween.

Just recently, Nuts and Bolts and Screws drew together 5 tonnes of bolts and nuts for repairs to the Lyttelton crane. Some of the

non-standard specifications had to be tracked down overseas. In all, the consignment, drawn from five different suppliers, was delivered four days early. “We have never yet been successful with a contract bid by being the best price,” says Mr Wadeson. “What has made the difference is good delivery and performance.”

Company representatives, Messrs Russell Fortune and Colin Knowles, outside Nuts and Bolts and Screws, Ltd’s offices and warehouse in Falsgrave Street.

Mr Fortune specialises in hardware sales of fasteners, while Mr Knowles and his fellow representatives, Messrs Peter Johnson and Andy Green, share extensive experience in the engineering field.

The other member of the “road” team, Mr Paul Halligan, is concentrating on the marketing of roof fasteners and rivets.

Representatives visit the factories of major suppliers often to keep pace with the latest products and innovations.