Founded in 1906 in Portland, Oregon, Schnitzer Steel Industries, Inc., is one of the nation's largest metal recyclers, as well as a leading provider of used and recycled auto parts.
With over 50 locations, Schnitzer’s Pick-n-Pull Auto Parts Business, is one of the nation's largest self-service used auto parts networks. After previously completing a successful first phase of their Vehicle Lifecycle Management system, we came back to implement the second phase of the VLM project.
Continuing to build on the accomplishments of Phase 1 of the project, the second phase was designed to further improve inventory monitoring and customer service by integrating internal servers, web-based interfaces and handheld devices. A major challenge was the requirement that development and testing of the project had to be completed within a three-month time frame so that the system was ready to pilot on schedule. We met the schedule challenges and delivered a new system that features:
- The ability to collect five times the source data – as compared to Phase 1 – at each store location to better inform management decisions
- An enhanced business reporting solution using SSRS
- A web-based interface for the business helpdesk to quickly identify and resolve any data anomalies
- A data interface to a 3rd party vendor for vehicle parts interchange lookups, serving both internal store use and via a public facing web site
- A centralized system which to controls and deploys software to handheld data collection devices
The project was completed and online in September 2011, and as a result, Schnitzer has new capabilities to monitor the production pipeline and provide new visibility to all levels of management.