In recent years, the brand products of China's construction machinery have been upgraded rapidly. The parts and components are updated rapidly according to the fault information, and the products are changed according to the user feedback. Of course, this is the advantage of Chinese enterprises, but sometimes if it is not handled well, the advantage may become a problem.
Fast iterative product is a double-edged sword
An accessory store owner told me that he had recently scrapped hundreds of thousands of dead stocks, all of which were old accessories overstocked due to the transformation of the main engine factory over the past ten years. Many sluggish inventories in dealers and parts stores are caused by equipment modifications. Many host manufacturers will not buy back old parts after design changes and product modifications.
As a result, dealers and parts stores have to bear the losses caused. In fact, it is extremely unfair for dealers and accessory stores to pay for the defects in the product design of the OEM. Unfortunately, the main engine factory has the absolute right to speak, and the downstream partners can only be forced to accept it.
Domestic loaders of brand a seldom change their models, giving the impression that the equipment is not fashionable enough and the sense of science and technology is insufficient. On the contrary, brand B loaders are often modified, with increasingly fashionable appearance and some new technologies. However, reliability problems often occur, which makes their dealers suffer. In order to ensure the timeliness of troubleshooting, they purchased many parts assemblies and put them in the warehouse. When the main engine factory replaced the parts supplier, the fault gradually disappeared, but the parts in the dealer's library became "fixed assets".
In comparison, the life of a brand dealers is much better. The products are mature, the accessories are stable, the number of SKUs is small, the spot rate is high, and there is little backlog. One of the reasons for rapid product iteration is that the design is not mature enough, and the side effect is that it is easy to cause overstock and waste of spare parts inventory.
The risk of spare parts inventory in overseas market is greater
The problem of spare parts inventory is more prominent in overseas markets. When Chinese brands enter the international market, we snatch customers from big international brands. In order to ensure the timeliness of the service, it is often "the troops and horses are not moving, and the grain and grass are first". The technical experts of the design department will list dozens of key parts that may fail in advance and put them into the local market as the initial inventory of parts.
The results are often not as good as people expected. After a few years, 90% of the initial inventory of accessories is still lying in the warehouse, causing serious waste. However, when the product breaks down, there are often out of stock, so we have to urgently airlift the parts overseas. Not only is the cost high, but also the customer has to stop and wait, resulting in serious customer complaints and negative word-of-mouth impact. Why is there such a "mismatch" of inventory?
First of all, the overseas market has a long delivery period. At present, about 90% of Global trade is completed by sea. Affected by the COVID-19 epidemic, ocean shipping is full of uncertainty, with costs soaring. The punctuality rate of shipping is only 30% to 40%, less than half of that in normal years. Therefore, higher requirements are put forward for the stock spot rate.
Second, the recommended list of spare parts given by technical experts is entirely based on experience, not fault data. Considering the long overseas delivery period, the safety factor of the recommended spare parts inventory is greater and the waste is more serious.
Third, it is recommended that most of the key parts in stock are assemblies, not secondary parts often used in maintenance. For example, once an injector is removed for fault maintenance, the whole engine assembly will not work. Many export models are customized according to customer needs, with small batches and high degree of personalization. It is likely that the inventory of spare parts will be sluggish, and if it is not released, it is easy to be out of stock, which often puts enterprises in a dilemma.
Due to the lack of inbound and outbound data, experts can only make inventory plans based on experience. The service department hopes that the more parts the better. The financial department requires cost control, which makes him very embarrassed.
Key to solve inventory mismatch
It is impossible to do a good inventory plan only by relying on experience. Enterprises must accumulate failure data. After all, no one knows more than data. Never underestimate the repeatability of accessory business. Hebei Tianyuan company has analyzed and mined a large number of equipment failure data, such as: what is the average first diesel engine shutdown failure time of large, medium and small excavators, so as to put forward the policy of extending the warranty period of equipment, prepare maintenance accessories in time, and calculate the failure and the customer.
However, the equipment and failure data in overseas markets are limited, and the difference between export models and domestic models is large. How can we use the massive failure data in the Chinese market to help overseas markets?
This requires Chinese brands to carry out product modularization design. For example, the walking, slewing and actuator modules of excavators adopt mature design. The domestic and overseas markets are the same, and the fault data of these modules have reference value. The difference between overseas products is mainly in the diesel engine and the control system, and there are also some auxiliary equipment configurations. If you can get fault statistics from the diesel engine manufacturer, it will help the enterprise to make a good inventory plan of accessories in advance.
The maintenance and wearing parts still have the greatest demand for spare parts. By collecting the fault and spare parts demand information of different products, which parts are prone to failure in what time period, determining the repair kit required for troubleshooting, customer spare parts demand data, etc., we can help make the inventory plan more accurate.
We have entered the era of big data and artificial intelligence, but many enterprises still don't pay attention to data, and a large number of product IOT data are still idle. Without data mining, we can't predict failures, and it's difficult to ensure the timeliness of services if accessories required for failure maintenance are not prepared in advance.
Extensive management methods have long been out of date, and the mismatch between supply and demand of spare parts inventory is one of the biggest pain points of many Chinese brands in overseas markets. Just imagine, if 90% of our spare parts inventory overseas is wasted, how can the enterprise meet the needs of customers? I'm afraid the profit of accessories earned by enterprises is not enough to cover the loss of sluggish inventory. What can Chinese brands rely on to gain a foothold overseas?
Therefore, only by changing the product design mode, collecting and analyzing fault data from today can we truly be prepared, do a good job in customer service, and let Chinese brands go global.
