Can no longer buy brushes from Warn for 8274?? (1 Viewer)

[John McVicker]

^^^

@NMC_EXP I get all that & agree with companies running a tight ship so to speak.

But really...Warn not having these on the shelf for their 'flagship' product just makes no sense. These brushes cost pennies to produce, take up virtually no shelf space store, the alternative to the end user is to spend hundreds on a replacement motor...when all it really needs to get back on the road is 4 brushes that cost a couple of bucks.

They have the solenoids avaliable when they go belly up...should be the same for the brushes...at least I think so.

 

[NMC_EXP]

John don't like to think it of Warn but it could be simple greed - sell a motor rather than brushes. But what I said about the corporate trend to reduce inventory as a way of reducing cost and increasing profits it true.

Warn has been around long enough it's management is probably 3 generations after the founders. In small family owned businesses it's common for generation #1 to be on fire to make the best product possible and support it. With each passing generation the energy and drive is reduced until little remains. If a small company goes public and ends up with a "professional" CEO and accountant all bets are off.

Don't know if any of this is the case with Warn - I hope not.

 

[NMC_EXP]

@John McVicker

Here's an example of inventory reduction insanity: My department made some small proprietary design components which were used across the entire corporation. One of our internal corporate customers ordered 10 to 20 of these parts every week. Corporate policy was that all parts were shipped and stored in standard industrial steel tote boxes (about 3'L x 2.5'W x 2.5'DP).

Every week we paid someone to put 10 to 20 of these little things in a tote box, do the paperwork, load it on a semi trailer and ship it 400 miles. Along the way the tote box would be unloaded at a cross-dock then loaded on a different truck for delivery to the final destination.

These 10-20 parts could be stuffed into your pockets. The tote box if full would hold about a thousand pieces.

Our internal customer had to have a spot in its warehouse for this tote box whether the box was full or empty. The corporate cost of these parts was about $0.40 each. A box full was maybe $400 worth of inventory.

But with the way the accounting was done our internal customer thought it was saving money ordering a handful of these things every week rather than a full tote box and carrying that inventory until the box was empty.