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For anyone that knows me or has spoken with me will know that I am not a native of Canada. I have been in Canada for around 30 years so consider myself well naturalized.

To the surprise of many, not all Canadians are either Lumberjacks or Hockey players.  But I am sure most Canadians at some time in their lives have wanted to be one or the other.  Not being a player of sports, I recently fell into the Lumberjack category. So last winter on one of my trips to my local hardware store I found a great starter chainsaw on sale (red tag, not plaid).  I could not wait for the weather to get warmer so I could try out my new found hobby.

A few weeks later it was time and all my impatience was finally subdued. I had a great time cutting and clearing chunks of wood from the bottom acre of our lot. After a couple of hours though I noticed that the saw chain had become blunt.  So, that was it for the day until I could get the saw chain sharpened.

I talked to many experts in the area as to where I could get the sharpening done and had a list of people to contact, but all through my conversations was advice that I should have two chains – one in use and one spare. Great idea, so another chain was now on my shopping list.

So back to the hardware store I went, armed with the manufacturer’s saw chain number and model number of the saw.  I knew I would need this from my experience in the supply chain (forgive the pun) world as suppliers can’t do much without the correct SKU.

I met a lovely lady at the service window who told me she would have to contact the manufacturer as they did not have stock of the chainsaw. She took my phone number and said she would call me when she had some answers.  Oops. I am thinking this may not be such a good experience. Anyway, later that day the phone rang and Kathy informed me that the chainsaw I had purchased at such a wonderful cut price was obsolete.  Double oops.  She continued to tell me that the manufacturer did say they may have some excess inventory of the saw chain and would look into it. She promised to call me again when she had further information.

I had not had time to digest what she had told me – was this the end of my new found hobby? The phone once again rang and it was Kathy.  She told me that the manufacturer was going to send me a new saw chain free of charge for the inconvenience. I did not really understand at the time why but I did think about one thing.

This particular manufacturer in a very short period of time had reviewed the model and part numbers and, although they had realized they were obsolete, was able to quickly find out that they had excess inventory of the saw chains and was willing to send me one.  What wonderful news for me.  More to the point was that the individual at the manufacturer obviously knew the difference between obsolete and excess: obsolete being “never to be used again” and excess being “supply that I have no demand for.”

I obviously do not know if his decision was supported by an enterprise application, but it was nice to see a manufacturer that to me was keeping the customer satisfied by using an obsolete product to further the customer’s confidence and now loyalty. The whole success is in being able to identify “obsolete from excess” inventory.

As a foot note the make of the chainsaw was ‘Yard Man’ by MTD.  MTD uses Kinaxis RapidResponse at some of their divisions but I am not sure at the time of this writing if the division that  supplied me with the saw chain uses RapidResponse.  But it does tell me one thing – this company has customer satisfaction as one of their motivators.

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Tags: Inventory
Posted in Inventory management
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