Perkins Launches Regional Logistics Center for Faster Customer Support
Perkins Engines has opened a 37,000-square-foot logistics facility as part of the 400,000-square-foot UPS-SCS facility in Elizabethtown, Ky., to facilitate faster response to customer needs.
Perkins determined that traditional parts warehousing and distribution channels aren’t responsive enough to meet the demands of today’s customers.
“The experience our customer expect online today is very different,” said Nick Morgan, supply chain and operations manager for Perkins. “They’re used to ordering from places like Amazon and want everything tomorrow, or maybe even later today. To remain competitive, we have to make that happen through things like e-commerce channels, online buying and our network of distributors and dealers. To accomplish that in North America we determined that the best strategy was to place a quick-response logistics operation for Perkins genuine parts in a central U.S. location. That was the genesis for Perkins’ new regional logistics center (RLC) in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. It is located in 37,000 square feet of dedicated floor space in the 400,000 square foot UPS-SCS multi-client Kentucky Distribution Center in Elizabethtown.”
The location was chosen both for its proximity to the UPS Worldport facility less than 50 miles away at Louisville International Airport and its access to the U.S. Interstate highway system to facilitate ground shipments across the United States and Canada. The close proximity of the Perkins RLC to the UPS Worldport means that customers in the eastern U.S. can place orders for next day delivery until 8 p.m. and west coast customers can order until the end of their business day also for next day delivery.
The Perkins RLC stocks more than 7,000 spare parts, each of which has been ordered at least three times in the last three years. Less frequently ordered parts will be shipped directly from the Perkins distribution center in the U.K.
The RLC also is an integral part of Perkins online parts-ordering system accessed via the perkins.com/shop website. Targeted at end users of Perkins-powered equipment, rental businesses, repair and engineering shops plus mobile service and repair engineers, perkins.com/shop allows U.S. customers to purchase genuine Perkins parts over the internet. Most of those parts will be shipped from the RLC to expedite delivery to the customer.
“The RLC is just the first step in implementing a new business model for our global aftermarket business,” added Morgan. “The future will be driven increasingly by data generated by engine telematics like our Perkins SmartCap and the Perkins My Engine App. That data will let us more precisely forecast what parts will be needed and when and where to support stocking decisions for facilities like the RLC.
“A big advantage of the data-driven approach is that it brings us a lot closer to our end customers, so we can get feedback directly and use it to improve our service. Customer service engineers can live chat with customers in real time. The future of parts and service is proactive and that’s where we’re going.”
About the Author
Michael Roth
Editor
Michael Roth has covered the equipment rental industry full time for RER since 1989 and has served as the magazine’s editor in chief since 1994. He has nearly 30 years experience as a professional journalist. Roth has visited hundreds of rental centers and industry manufacturers, written hundreds of feature stories for RER and thousands of news stories for the magazine and its electronic newsletter RER Reports. Roth has interviewed leading executives for most of the industry’s largest rental companies and manufacturers as well as hundreds of smaller independent companies. He has visited with and reported on rental companies and manufacturers in Europe, Central America and Asia as well as Mexico, Canada and the United States. Roth was co-founder of RER Reports, the industry’s first weekly newsletter, which began as a fax newsletter in 1996, and later became an online newsletter. Roth has spoken at conventions sponsored by the American Rental Association, Associated Equipment Distributors, California Rental Association and other industry events and has spoken before industry groups in several countries. He lives and works in Los Angeles when he’s not traveling to cover industry events.