Power Equipment Takes Storage Vertical

Robert Drysdale, National Operations Manager, and Mike Candy, Spare Parts Manager was interviewed on their recent purchase of the Hanel Vertical Storage Machines.

What were the main reasons for purchasing another two Hanel Vertical Storage Machines?

‘We primarily use all four Vertical Storage Machines for housing and tracking our light and heavy spare parts.  We have just finalised integrating the four machines, they now can run simultaneously, so for example you can go to any operating panel and type in the part required, and then all four machines can run and locate the parts for you. This offers a significant time saving when you are trying to send out parts to customers, and it also ensures we keep accurate records of our spare parts inventory and where they have been sent,’ Drysdale says.

So what are the main benefits you have already seen?

There are three key benefits we can see already: ‘Space saving, as you can see, our storage machines are 9 metres in height and we have four of them, you can image what this place would look like if we didn’t have them the shelves would go on forever’.

‘OHS issues are also minimised as the parts are brought to us at waist height, there is no stacking of boxes up high on top of one another, you can see what our old system was like, it was a significant risk to the business to store heavy parts like that.

‘Accurate recording of spare parts – they have seen a significant inventory improvement with increased security, a lot of their spare parts are expensive, this is a good way they can keep track of everything. The spare parts arrive from the supplier already bar coded, so we simply scan (with the portable scanner) in to the system when it arrives. You simply scan the part once it comes in and the scanner will tell you what Hanel the part is in, then it will bring the correct shelf down so we can put it away. As the customer’s request spare parts, we call the part up and ship it out overnight’, says Drysdale.

How did you find the whole process of integrating the Hanel systems into your workflow?

‘Well it was quite a bit of work, as we had to adjust all our current systems to fit in with the new processes, but this in itself was a good exercise to look at ways we could create greater efficiencies. The company believes, system improvements have allowed us to increase spare parts tunr over by 45% without increasing our warehouse staff and move from being a small company to a leader in our industry. So to propose the Hanel vertical storage systems and automate the spare parts system was an easy argument to win’, Drysdale comments.

What other elements do you believe have helped make Power Equipment to be successful?

‘It helps being large enough to serve the market, but also be small enough to be more flexible, we can make decisions faster and act on issues that could be detrimental to our business.

‘We are always looking to the future and ways in which we can grow; over the last 20 years we have seen good market growth, the growth itself has plateaued over the last 2 years. To aid in our growth we actually bought three companies during the downturn, we saw it as a good opportunity to take hold of opportunities rather than scale-down activities and this has already started to take effect. We have also in recent years expanded in to new territories, New Zealand for example and have integrated all company’s and three new dealers for parts distribution and now we are ensuring we consider the environment a lot more, this is a growing concern for the market and one with which we want to.

Drysdale states, ‘We are careful what products we represent and we are particularly passionate about Yanmar, as they spend a considerable amount of time on research and development for their products. All the products we import need to meet the American and European standards, which gives us a lot of confidence’.

About Power Equipment

Power Equipment is privately owned by Alan Foster and are distributors of MASE, Marine Generation, YANMAR Diesel Engines (for marine and industrial use), GORI Propellers, JCB and more. The company was incorporated in 1990; and they currently employ over 40 people and growing.

Power Equipment started as the exclusive dealer of Yanmar Marine diesel engines and today, they have expertise and experience to assist with virtually any diesel engine application whether it’s marine or industrial. Located around Australia, they have offices in Victoria, Western Australia, New South Wales, Queensland and now far North Queensland.

Read more about Power Equipment here.

For more information about our range of Vertical Storage Systems, please click here.