Situation

Since beginning in 1927, the E. O. Habhegger Company has been serving the Industrial & Petroleum Industries. Starting with one location on Girard Avenue in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania the company grew steadily through the stock market crash of 1929, and the Second World War. Today E.O. Habhegger has two locations. They have a new 22,000 square foot Headquarters facility in Yeadon, Pennsylvania, and a 10,000 square foot warehouse in Hammonton, New Jersey. Both have large inventories, and a strong support staff who are eager to service their clients' needs.

Challenge

Our philosophy has always been the same regardless of the details of the individual project. We wanted to allow our people to perform their tasks as quickly as possible while not sacrificing accuracy. It does us no good if our people can work quickly but their work isn't right. For example, for years, we never knew where we were storing our various inventory items and for that matter, didn't know how many of each item we had. We had to find a way to efficiently and effectively track inventory. Speaking of inventory, doing a physical inventory used to be a nightmare. We used to shut down the company for a whole week or more every year between Christmas and New years and the whole company counted inventory. Physical inventories were costing us thousand of dollars in labor and lost sales. Addressing these inventory control problems became out highest priority.

Solution

Joe Booth worked closely with me and our employees to understand not only the details of our daily transactions but also the nuances of the people sitting at the computer doing the work .The accounting system has been fine tuned to allow our people to process transactions quickly and accurately. I also have all the inventory tracking tools I need to effectively monitor inventory. NPAS also streamlined the physical inventory process. Item counts are now recorded aisle by aisle and bin by bin. This single concept of counting items in the order that they are stocked in the warehouse has dramatically improved the physical count process.

Results

NPAS set up a tracking system so our people can quickly process orders and invoices, which makes them happy, and inventory is accurately tracked, which makes management happy. As a result, work is done faster and more accurately and we've freed up about $100,000 that used to be tied up in inventory because we have exactly what we should in the warehouse. As far as physical inventory counts, what used to shut down the company for a whole week or more is now done by a few employees in a couple of days saving us thousand of dollars in labor and lost sales. It also doesn't hurt that the reports listing inventory locations are actually accurate. Now when we go to the location to count the item, it's there and we count it and move on! Not only do we save a fortune doing physical inventories, an added bonus is our people don't dread the whole process. That's money saved and happier employees, which is what we've consistently gotten from working with NPAS.