Housekeeping in your DMS

By Tim Manzo, ADMI

I’m certain that most of you perform regular housekeeping chores in and around your home to keep things operating smoothly. Just like your home, the Dealership Management System (DMS), in your parts department, requires regular “housekeeping”. This system maintenance keels it operating efficiently, and ensures you have the right parts on the shelves when your customers need them. I have listed examples of daily, weekly, and monthly “chores” that don’t take up a lot of your valuable time, and will help keep your DMS operating efficiently. Remember, parts investment optimization.

• • DAILY
    • Sourcing – Making it a habit each day to pay attention to the sourcing of your part numbers when invoicing, running reports, or generating stock orders. When you identify a part that is in the wrong source, make the necessary adjustment immediately.
      • Parts are grouped in different sources within the DMS as a way of organizing them.
      • Each source may have different settings such as phase-in/phase-out criteria, days’ supply, price codes, and source accounting.
      • OEM parts programs may require specific source settings. Different source settings help to identify the right parts to stock based on customer demand, help to control inventory breadth and depth, ensures pricing is accurate when parts are invoiced, and ensures part sales are accurately recorded in accounting. For all these things to happen, it is critical that parts are in their correct source.
  • WEEKLY
    • Open Orders – These should be reviewed at least once per week to ensure part numbers are still on order from the manufacture. Open parts orders not found on manufacture’s ordering site are invalid and should be cancelled.
    • Best Stocking Level (BSL) – When you generate a stock order, your DMS calculates a (BSL) for each part. This is based on a variety of factors, including lost sales, sales demand, and open orders. Since the majority of parts in your inventory have a BSL of 1, a part with an open order, that is invalid, will prevent the DMS from suggesting that part for replacement. It also won’t suggest enough on-order quantity to meet demand. Properly receipting parts into the system will help minimize invalid open orders.
  • MONTHLY
    • Minimum and Maximum (MIN/MAX) Settings – These settings, on part numbers, should not be set and forgotten about. They should be reviewed monthly to ensure they remain valid for each part. Keep in mind that the use of MIN/MAX essentially removes the DMS from calculations for stock orders. They should be used on a small number of parts you want to control manually.

Hope you enjoyed Housekeeping in your DMS!