Sioux Falls Truck & Trailer – reducing walk-and-wait time for big savings and productivity gains

For Dan Mills, the decision to implement an Apex inventory management solution came down to putting a price on employees’ time – and protecting his company’s IT investment.

Mills is parts and service director for North American Truck and Trailer, a thriving, full-service dealership with 13 locations throughout the U.S. At the company’s flagship Sioux Falls, South Dakota location, Mills saw a growing problem that was eating away at productivity – a daily bottleneck at the parts counter.

Its nearly 60 service technicians would spend a good part of every day walking to the counter and waiting in line to pick up parts. “It wasn’t uncommon to see 5 to 7 people standing and waiting,” said Mills.

There was a similar problem with picking up diagnostic laptops. These expensive computers run licensed software that’s required for many jobs, but Sioux Falls was having trouble managing them. To protect the company’s IT investment, they started checking them out at the parts counter, which made the queue at the counter even longer.