Aerospace Products International

Challenge:

As a result of relocating API's corporate offices, the MRO business unit lacked a facility to repair and overhaul aircraft brakes or starter generators.  Additionally, the hose and push button switch shop suffered long lead times from inventory shortages due to the lack of a dedicated supply chain.  Overall, the impact was limited product availability resulting in lack of sales opportunities and diminished sales revenue.  

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Solution:

Due to the costly expense of establishing and tooling a new facility for the repair and overhauls of brakes and starter generators, I created a repair and overhaul vendor network to outsource these services and expand API's capabilities.  Processes were developed to manage each job and vendor, resulting in fast turn around times and ultimately, ensuring the programs success.  Through negotiations with the vendors of API's repair and overhaul network, I established the largest rotable pool and availability in API's history.

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The component inventory supporting the hose and switch shop also supporting our parts distribution business unit.  As demand for these components increased through the distribution channel, the inventory supply to support the hose and switch shop diminished, causing delays in manufacturing.  To solve this "scavenging effect", I created a separate plant (SAP) that contained only those components necessary to support the hose and switch business.  Additionally, each component was provided a min / max inventory value based upon various indicators including a previous 24 month consumption rate to ensure component inventory availability.   These changes resulted in very quick turn around times; same day turn around times were common.  

Aerospace Products International

Challenge:

Due to poor layout design and outdated web services, API's original e-commerce solution was inefficient, causing customer frustration and impacting sales.  Product searches took a minimum of 12 seconds while the results page failed to provide the necessary data to encourage a sell.  Additionally, API utilized 3 separate xml web services to provide the necessary data for a product search result.  These web services responded at different times causing the over all delay in page load speed.

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Solution:

Focused on improved user experience, the product search results page layout was significantly improved to provide additional data necessary to facilitate a purchase.  Additionally, we used AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML) to accommodate the varying response speeds of the web services while providing a fast search results page load.  The new API E-commerce site includes newly developed features and functionality based upon customers' feedback. A few of these are:

• Faster product search speeds. API’s new search engine is up to five times faster than the top suppliers in the market.  A search for up to 100 items takes less than 1 second (in most cases), while a single product search is less than .5 seconds.  

• Live chat. API's customer service has been acknowledged as among the best in the industry. Live chat extends this support to the website, eliminating the need for a phone call. Among the top three suppliers, only API provides this class of service.

• Shopping cart assistance. API's customer service specialists can access a customer shopping cart (in real time - feature is first to market) and assist with locating products or creating saved shopping carts for future use.

• Advanced shopping cart functionality. Users can create a shopping cart, give it a custom name, and save it for future use.

• Product in-stock alerts. Users can easily create an in-stock alert to receive notification as soon as a product is available for purchase.  This features provides insightful information for supply chain planning.  

• Drag and drop interface for multi-item searches. Users can drag purchasing spreadsheets from their computer and drop them onto the page. This saves times by eliminating the process of trying to locate the correct spreadsheet, then attempting to upload it.  Searches for up to 100 products typically take less than one second to perform.

• Mobile responsive. The API site adapts to the user’s device, offering full functionality from a single website regardless of the users device.

Aerospace Products International

Challenge:

API lacked an efficient method of managing opportunities and customer data.  Utilizing multiple spreadsheets proved to be cumbersome, time consuming, and ineffective.  Consequently, overall sales suffered due to lack of reporting and an inability to manage accounts and opportunities.  

Solution:

As the project leader for Salesforce.com CRM implementation team, I customized several standard objects, including the Account, Contact, Lead, and Opportunities object to align with API's goals and objectives.  As some of the products were customizable, I developed a product configurator to assist users in meeting customer requirements.  We considered creating a custom javascript application to access the bulk API salesforce interface for the data imports, however, since the record count was relatively small and manageable, we leveraged a third party application, Jitterbit, to perform the upsert from a prepackaged data file (exported from SAP).  Customer reports and dashboards were created to support daily reviews and accountability.   Workflow rules were created to promote customer follow up activity and management notifications.  Approvals were setup on custom objects to provide a formal request process as well as address accountability for responses.  Utilizing the Service Cloud, we deployed chat in conjunction with the cases object, incorporating this feature with the new API website.  Solutions were created to assist chat operators with customer support.  I created various custom objects and logic to meet our business objectives.  Additionally, I presented and trained employees on the proper use of the Salesforce.com CRM and served as the administrator and subject matter expert.

Aerospace Products International

Challenge:

Increase shareholder value by merging API, an airframe and power plant product distributor with AIS, an avionics and electronics product distributor.  Merger must be achieved while continuing the daily business activities of each company.

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Solution:

Considering the aggressive timeline required to complete the merger (120 days), I organized the actionable items of the merger into 7 main components.  

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1. Customers

2. Vendors

3. Inventory

4. Services

5. Infrastructure (Opening / Closing Facilities, Network, IT, etc)

6. Accounting & Finance

7. Staff (employees).

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Each main component was appointed an accountable leader and actionable tasks were created and assigned a due date.  An overall project timeline was created and reviewed with the shareholders weekly to address the mergers progress and any issue's affecting the timeline. Daily huddles were established for accountable leaders to review status of the previous days action items and prepare their teams for the current day expectations of actionable items.  

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The merger and integration of AIS and API was completed just prior to the end of 2013 (with-in the 120 day deadline).  API began 2014 with an expanded capability, a larger customer base who generated higher margin sales, a larger and more robust supply chain, and a new call center facility in North Texas.  

Avionics International Supply, Inc.

Challenge:

AIS was a leader of innovative customer solutions in the aerospace market.  To remain at the forefront of the digital experience, and to attract a potential business partner or investor, AIS needed to create a big impact in the market.  

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Solution:

I created “iParts by AIS”, a feature rich iPhone / iPad app that assist customers in identifying and stocking products resulting in increased customer engagement and sales.  AIS was acquired by a private equity investment company in July 2013.  

iParts features include:

• Customer Profile Storage - allows user to store their profile data to be used by the various tools offered in the application.
• Request Quote - simple form to request a quotation on any item(s). 
• Purchase - simple purchase order form for parts procurement.
• Scan / Re-Stock - quick and easy restock tool utilizing your mobile device integrated camera to scan the part number barcode and transmit the restock order for procurement. 
• Identify Part - tool to allow user to select and modify / resize, if necessary, an image of a part to assist in item identification. 
• Product Catalog - separated into sections for quick product lookup and search functionality. 

Avionics International Supply, Inc.

Challenge:

Funded by an ABL (asset based loan), AIS faced liquidity issue's due to slow moving inventory.  The slower the inventory turn rate, the less cash availability to invest in the business.  

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Solution:

Multiple sales channels, such as an eBay and Amazon store, were created to list, promote and sell the stagnant inventory.  Hardware products were grouped together by type, having small amounts of varying sizes to establish the newly branded "Grab-N-Go Multi Kits".  As these kits were sold, the non or slow moving hardware was consumed from inventory as a bill of material to support the purchased kit.  New processes where established to support the new sales channels as well as the Grab-N-Go product assemblies.  The new product line created value for the distributor to help consume the non / slow moving inventory, and value for the consumer in that multiple sizes could be purchased and supported as a package for a reasonable price. The Grab-N-Go product line consisted of:​

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• Grab-N-Go Heat Shrink Multi Kit

• Grab-N-Go Cable Ties Multi Kit

• Grab-N-Go Blue Ring Terminals Multi Kit

• Grab-N-Go Red Ring Terminals Multi Kit

• Grab-N-Go Sheet Metal Screws Multi Kit

• Grab-N-Go Instrument Screws Multi Kit

• Grab-N-Go Sub D Terminals Multi Kit

• Grab-N-Go Molex Connectors Multi Kit

• Grab-N-Go Pin Insertion Tools Multi Kit

Avionics International Supply, Inc.

Challenge:

Multiple changes to the product line offering and increasing company capabilities left the distributor catalog outdated and no longer an effective tool for the business.  Hiring a third party creative team plus printing cost was a deterrent in keeping the catalog regularly up to date.

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Solution:

Improve ROI by bringing the creative work in house and preparing a print ready file.  Converted the original catalog design files from Quark to In Design to support future updates and compatibility with photoshop and illustrator.  I hired a part time graphics student from a nearby college to support the creative work.  To reduce print cost, we printed the internal pages black and white while printing the cover in color.