Case Study - Catalyst Paper
Catalyst Paper (formerly known as NorskeCanada) had decided to undertake the clean up of its item descriptions internally. After more than a year’s effort involving nineteen team members, they had only managed to complete 70,000 of their 120,000 items. The time had come to call in the external experts for assistance: I.M.A. Ltd.
Gord Coburn, Manager, Strategic Sourcing at Catalyst, was first introduced to I.M.A. and its services through Invensys Avantis, an EAM software supplier, and valued Service Partner to I.M.A.
In less than six months, the remaining inventory item descriptions were cleaned, standardized and enhanced. “They really understood the problems our maintenance people were dealing with.” “They were good to work with.”
The original Catalyst team, consisting of Electrical, Mechanical, Instrumentation & Pipe Fitters from all four sites as well as two support people stayed focused on the backlog of obsolete and excess active items while the Inventory Specialist worked with I.M.A. as the Catalyst internal Quality Control (QC) expert.
With $80,000,000 in overall inventory, a 20% reduction was identified. They are currently managing the consumption and disposal of the excessive active and inactive inventory. Duplicates ran higher than 10% within all four sites; over $2,000 000 of obsolete parts were written off. The Catalyst target of $250,000 in annualized savings was more than realized; the project was deemed a success.
Asked what changes he might make if he had to do it again, Gord Coburn replied, “We wouldn't have started it ourselves. We had developed an inconsistent methodology which caused us a lot of problems and added to our timeline.” “We would have had I.M.A. do it all and learned to live with the new nomenclature.” “However,” he added, “an internal QC person is still required to ensure that the cleaned data meets internal needs.”
Keeping the data in synch across three systems continues to be a challenge. Three dedicated resources within the Catalyst organization currently manage the inventory item catalog.
Gord Coburn has high regard for the work I.M.A. did at Catalyst and often recommends their services to others.
