Good Defense fuels a Great Offense

Good Defense fuels a Great Offense

Tim McGuire
Contributing Writer

Recently, I have been working on an inventory project at our company. We sold our company assets along with 2 other companies to form a new entity in the Twin Cities, Noah Acquisitions, DBA Ben Franklin Plumbing now has 20 plumbing crews doing service and repair work.  In this new business, our old system of inventory quickly became outdated.

We have the advantage of having Barnett Brass as a vendor partner and they have an on-site warehouse they stock and run on our behalf.  Barnett handles all the weekly ordering for the tech parts and resupplies them as needed.  Our merger of assets has created an abundance of inventory.

The first step in my inventory project was to take the entire inventory from three companies and layout the stock in appropriate bins to identify what we already had on hand. This was going to be a time consuming and nasty project because of the volume of stuff we had. To complicate matters, at the same time this was going on I was responsible for approving vendor payables on a weekly basis.  It quickly became clear that we were purchasing the identical items that we already had in our inventory.

A good football game is comprised of both offense and defense (amongst other elements like Special Teams, support staff, etc.) and it is often said that defense wins championships.  It dawned on me that we have to sharpen our defense in order to maximize the output of our offense.

When call counts are down, team spirit is down and ultimately profitability goes down.  A good defense can help overcome this.  We immediately implemented an extra review process of all job tickets.  Our technicians get parts re-supplied by writing down what was used on each job.  These tickets are now reviewed before they are given to Barnett to identify what items we already have available in stock.

Since we expense out inventory when we buy it, all the inventory that we already have is cash in the bank – if we sell it.  For us, this one defensive move resulted in an additional 2-5{938cd9e8dae860e800efc538277d4f7684e6f6981618ba70d1c34357a53c2e1f} reduction in material cost this month.  Our budget for January is about $650,000 in sales. Our 5{938cd9e8dae860e800efc538277d4f7684e6f6981618ba70d1c34357a53c2e1f} reduction in materials equates to a $32,500 savings.  Do you think this may give our offense something to cheer about?

Finding defensive measures like these are not that difficult.  What do you do with the men when work dries up?  Many contractors I know will send them along with another crew or find shop work for them to do.  This simply adds to the overhead during an already slow time.  This is like getting an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty when it is already 4th and 10.  Non-billable time adds up quickly and it will take a Brett Farve-like play to overcome the deficit.

Remember that Defense wins championships and gives your Offense a better opportunity to reign supreme.  Focus on the fundamentals and keep your head in the game.  Who dat nation get ready, the Vikings are coming to town!  Skol Vikes!!

Originally published in the Buzz, January 2012 edition.