Hallie Chandler

Don’t do things just because that’s the way they’re always done. Sometimes there’s a way to make processes better – saving both time and money.

Some people are naturally good at identifying a problem and finding a solution. Hallie Chandler is one of those people. An Inventory Associate in the Winder, GA facility, she noticed there was quite a bit of administrative time and cost associated with receiving coils into stock as new batch numbers. She saw her teammates struggling with the amount of nonvalue-added time wasted performing these functions.

Although it wasn’t a part of her job description, Hallie wanted to help. She researched and found a function in Microsoft’s Dynamic AX software that allowed us to change the purchase date to the current day that the material was received into our stock. Giving the material a new “birthday” to allow the inventory to be zero days old at receipt helps us save:

• Time at receipt re-entering all the match attributes
• Time retagging coils at the shop
• The cost of reprinting tags for every item

Cameron Price, Controller, says this new way to account for incoming inventory is directly saving valuable time and money (approximately

$7,300 per year). In addition, it allows the division to increase its usage of the Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) program, which offers Olympic Steel significant cost savings.

Lesson Learned: Don’t do things just because that’s the way they’re always done. Sometimes there’s a way to make processes better – saving both time and money.