THE sometimes rather dusty image of the world of spare parts has leap-frogged into the 21st century courtesy of a radio frequency scanning system that is part of the latest armoury of business tools designed to speed components to farmers.
Giving an insight into the releveance of its latest warehouse upgrade, CNH Australia's general manager for parts operation Aust/NZ, Dean Hopping, was in a bullish mood at the official opening of the company’s merged site at St Marys, NSW, late last week.
With 150,000 parts stored on the 6.5ha site, the emphasis is on keeping track of everything from tyres and engines to more humble nuts and bolts.
The soon to be up-and-running radio frequency technology will be an essential element in keeping a handle on where they all can be quickly accessed.
"The whole warehouse will be 'wireless' within the next couple of months and we’ll be using bar code scanning – to speed orders and delivery to our customers," Mr Hopping said.
"If we don't put a part in the right place the first time, and can't recall where it is, it makes it very hard to find."
This is where the hand-held bar-code scanning system will come into play.
The point being underscored by CNH Australia managing director, Ian Fisher, is that farmers and contractors who spend more than $500,000 on one of its products, not only expect it be cutting edge technology but, once sold, to be fully supported by top-flight back up services.
"The (upgraded) parts and service organisation could provide us with a distinct competitive advantage (over rival companies)," he said.
"It's critical to the overall success of our dealers, and for our customers, to supply a complete range of parts and service - not just for existing products but for products that were discontinued up to 10 years ago," Mr Fisher added.
His thoughts were echoed by parts specialist Mr Hopping, who says it is "paramount" the farming community's investment in the company's machinery keeps users going – especially in what is expected to be a busy harvest for Australia.
Interestingly, this also turns CNH's global parts personnel into the area of long range weather forecasters.
"We have to predict at least six months ahead if we are going to use sea freight to bring in parts," Dean Hopping said.
"Despite Australia's weather being so severe, and so variable, we had to make the decisions about what to import at the turn of the year."
Conceding the company had "a lot of stock" for the harvest ahead, the expectation is that parts availability will not be an issue at CNH during the upcoming season.
A year after the collapse of some major northern hemisphere banks, it's worth pointing out that CNH approved the $3.1m upgrade to its St Marys facility at roughly the same time.
The idea is to lift the profile of its Australian parts and service arm to become an important hub for supplying its growing Asian business commitments.
"It's all about keeping machines working because our customers are only happy when their machines are working," Mr Hopping said.
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