A smarter parts logistics solution has enabled BSW Heating to cut travelling times and repeat visits. The London-based gas heating engineering firm has been able to dramatically reduce the time spent fetching replacement parts thanks to Infomill’s PartsArena.

Because BSW’s 48 service engineers were unable to stock every conceivable part in their vans, they had to spend a lot of time on the road between jobs to pick up the components they needed. In central London, this is a very serious issue, as journey times can be very long over even short distances.

“We wanted to find a better way for our engineers to order parts,” comments BSW’s Service Director Robert Bazil. “The ideal would be to order quickly from their PDAs then have parts ready for collection from our stockists branch within the vicinity of the engineer’s work.”

Thanks to PartsArena, this is now possible. Engineers can find the part they need, either by a text search or on an exploded parts diagram, then order it from their PDA. The order is sent to BSW’s back-end system and then allocated to the appropriate branch of Parts Center, BSW’s stockist of choice.

Engineers then simply call in at their nearest Parts Center each morning and collect every part they need without any hassle over processing manual orders or finding the correct parts numbers.

“Our engineers used to send mixed parts requests to our parts manager who would have to ascertain the exact item required based on asset data and then send the order through manually,” continues Bazil. “Now, thanks to PartsArena, the process is automated and far more accurate and efficient.”