The Use of MARS-IW to Handle Large Numbers of Vendors

Charles J. Bodenstab

Some distributors must purchase from a large number of vendors, sometimes reaching as many as 400. Conversely, they are the first to admit that a small percent account for the bulk of the volume that they routinely order. Nevertheless, the purchasing function for the remainder of the vendors is awkward and time consuming if they bring up each vendor in succession.

MARS-IW can greatly simplify this process as follows:

The distributor should isolate the vendors that constitute the “miscellaneous” group and give them a single “super vendor” number. (Each specific vendor should nevertheless have its own vendor file with its own lead time and fill rate.) Then, on some fixed schedule, such as weekly, call up this super vendor in the Pre-Select screen, and the system will gather up all the vendors of that group.

Then, run the program as if you were ordering on a single vendor. The order screen will show all the SKUs that were in need of reordering, and all the normal reviews and checks can be performed. The key point, however, is that the system will have screened through the numerous vendors, and pulled out only the SKUs that were ready for reordering, in seconds. Additionally, it will have isolated only the vendors where action is required, since most of the miscellaneous vendors will actually be dormant for that period.

After the checking is completed, create a purchase order as you would normally. In this case, however, the system will actually produce a separate purchase order for each vendor, which is exactly what we want.

The entire elapsed time to accomplish what we just described would be less than 20 minutes, if that.