Inbound Logistics | January 2025

INVENTORYMGMT [ IN PRACTICE ]

Bolting Ahead: SBS Tightens its Supply Chain

Specialty Bolt & Screw, Inc. (SBS), a leading provider of fastening solutions, offers more than 15,000 SKUs across 12 locations, and manages a complex global supply chain. As a result, it required a more efficient and accurate inventory management and forecast function than it was able to achieve with its older, homegrown system.

THE CUSTOMER Founded in Massachusetts in 1977, Specialty Bolt & Screw Inc. is a leading U.S. distributor in the fastener industry. It also works with key manufacturing partners across locations in Asia, Europe, and North and Central America to provide high- quality fasteners for several industries, including the outdoor recreational vehicle marketplace. THE PROVIDER RELEX Solutions’ unified platform provides one source of data and visibility to help retailers, wholesale companies, and consumer packaged goods manufacturers align and optimize demand, merchandise, supply chain, and operations planning across the end-to-end value chain. by: Karen Kroll

To improve inventory management, SBS partnered with RELEX Solutions, which offers supply chain planning and other solutions. Its platform provides a single source of data and visibility to help companies align and optimize demand, merchandise, supply chain, and operations planning. “We are a business-to-business distributor of fasteners and other small parts, such as screws, bolts, and rivets,” says Matthew Larsson, vice president of supply chain operations with the Agawam, Massachusetts-based company. ADDING VALUE WITH LOGISTICS SBS adds value by managing these SKUs for its clients. While the products tend to be small, clients typically order them in large volumes and require timely deliveries to ensure their operations aren’t interrupted. “SBS handles sourcing, planning, and logistics,” Larsson says. SBS delivers the products, often just- in-time, to its customers. In many cases,

clients receive their orders within three hours of placing them. “For most of our customers, it’s critical that we don’t shut down their production lines by being late,” Larsson says. With automotive customers, for instance, shutting down a production line would mean idling workers and potentially causing the supplier to miss orders. As a result, automotive customers may impose penalties when orders are late. In addition, many of SBS’s customers maintain a low inventory of the parts that SBS supplies. While this helps to keep their working capital requirements low, it adds to the urgency of timely deliveries. SBS had been relying on a homegrown, manual planning system that no longer sufced. Among other shortcomings, planners had to search for information and complete manual calculations before they could determine what to order. “Planners spent a lot of time on non- value-add activities, such as manually typing data into the ERP system,” Larsson recalls.

January 2025 • Inbound Logistics 191