Strategic thinking with added services
By Industrial Distribution Staff -- Industrial Distribution, 6/1/1999
For nearly four years communications equipment manufacturer Allen Telecom Inc. has relied on CMI Industries, Inc. to stock fasteners and electronic hardware. Like many other of CMI Industries' core customers, Allen Telecom's plant in Solon, Ohio, is within 10 miles of CMI's warehouse in Twinsburg. While it is well placed locally, CMI's resources are really strategic, say customers like Allen Telecom's commodities manager Betty Wiley.CMI employees check and replenish items and use a Kan Ban system to fill individual production cells, but that's only the beginning, Wiley says. Perhaps more importantly, CMI's sales engineers work with her firm's engineers in product design, standardizing parts numbers and reducing paperwork. Wiley says it adds up to saving about one-quarter of what her firm used to spend on hardware items.
"They're just a super outfit, they're so helpful," says Wiley. "Whether it's 200,000 parts or two, they go out of their way to get that part in and the material when I need it."
While it remains small with 12 employees and had $2.2 million in sales during 1997, customers say CMI Industries thinks big. Its services include kitting and bagging, light assembly work, quality testing and preparation [such as extra tumbling and preparation of hardware], locating less expensive items and documenting usage for customers. It is ISO 9002 certified as well as for ANSI/ASQC Q9002.
CMI was formed by Craig Skorepa in 1981. He had worked at another distributorship and saw an opportunity to move beyond traditional fastener sales. His wife, Meg Skorepa, who is treasurer, joined the business seven years ago after 17 years in marketing and management at IBM.
"I think one of the things customers have always appreciated is we can give them answers to things they couldn't have, like, how much did [they] spend in a year, or organizing part numbers internally," says Craig Skorepa, who is president. "Our systems have been kept up."
CMI often lands new accounts when engineering and purchasing employees familiar with CMI switch companies and refer their new firms to CMI, Meg Skorepa says. "We've moved from the view that it's a commodity item to that it's a service item," she says.
Charmaine Kutney, a commodity manager at Ingersoll-Rand Aro Corp., agrees. More than 18 months ago her company brought in CMI to supply miscellaneous items in Bryan, Ohio, and she is impressed with their quality inspections and ideas to consolidate and manage products. Early this spring Ingersoll-Rand picked CMI to start a supplier-owned and managed inventory program at four divisions.
"We take the top suppliers and put them through an accelerated pace so that both can reap benefits quickly," says Kutney. "They're willing to step outside of the box."
Virgil Ganchorre, a buyer for Rockwell Automation, has seen CMI grow and is impressed with the supplier direct delivery program and its enhanced EDI order entry system, for example. CMI is the sole major hardware supplier for two Ohio plants and is participating in bidding for all Rockwell parts.
"They define value added," says Ganchorre. "CMI doesn't just sell components."
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