Learning Objectives
Gather best practices for improving the performance of your service chain, and benchmark yourself with others in the industry by learning how to:
- Increase the profitability of service parts operations through accurate forecasting.
- Optimize inventory and reduce costs, while improving customer satisfaction.
- Understand the benefits that best-in-class companies have achieved by leveraging technology.
Program Content
Henry Ford once said, "A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large."
With increasing global competition and changing customer dynamics, excellent service has become a critical differentiator. Organizations across multiple industries are looking at their service operations as sources of a stable, high-margin revenue flow that can mitigate marketplace fluctuations. But meeting new service level targets profitably requires creating accurate demand forecasts and optimizing inventory levels. Most organizations find creating accurate plans and forecasts for spare parts consumption challenging or extremely challenging, due in part to episodic demand patterns. The end results are high inventory costs, excess and sometimes obsolete inventory, or stock-outs.
Join BetterManagement.com and SAS to hear what leading companies and their service organizations are doing to improve profitability and the performance of their service operations. Hear from industry experts and incumbents about the returns these organizations have achieved by leveraging advanced demand forecasting and inventory optimization technologies in their service parts operations.
The panelists will share best practices generated from numerous case studies and industry experience.
Participant Level of Understanding
This program is intended for participants with an interest in service parts management and overall service performance management.
Who Should Attend
Service managers, executives responsible for aftermarket or service support, and customer support managers who want to understand how to improve performance in the service chain, specifically focusing on how to increase profitability by minimizing inventory costs while improving customer service.
About Eric Arnum, Bill Roberts and John Simeoni
Eric Arnum, Editor, Warranty Week
Eric Arnum is the Editor of Warranty Week, an online publication for the warranty professional. Launched in 2002, Warranty Week focuses on the manufacturing industry's aftermarket, with analyses of warranty costs, regulatory reporting, market value, and warranty product and management trends.
Warranty Week also hosts the Warranty Chain Management Conference, an annual event that gives warranty professionals the opportunity to meet and discuss warranty-related issues and develop warranty management as a recognized discipline.
Before launching Warranty Week, Arnum edited several newsletters in the telecom industry, and performed research and consulting projects for a wide range of clients in North America, South America and Europe.
Bill Roberts, Manager, Supply Chain Solutions, SAS
Bill Roberts is the Manager of Supply Chain Solutions for SAS and leads the global pre-sales support for these solutions. His group of domain experts drives the sale of SAS solutions across the supply chain and provides thought leadership in the market space. Throughout his career, Roberts has been instrumental in delivering numerous software projects that span the entire enterprise.
Roberts has more than eight years of experience selling analytic software in the manufacturing industry and 14 years in information technology. While working with clients, he gained valuable insights into the business and information technology requirements for applying analytics and technology to drive specific business value with a focus in manufacturing and service. Roberts is a graduate of Michigan State University and resides in Cary, NC.
John Simeoni, Operations Research Analyst, US Coast Guard
John Simeoni is an Operations Research Analyst for the US Coast Guard in the Office of Logistics Information. He has worked for the Coast Guard for a little more than three years. Prior to that, he was a Senior Operations Analyst with Capital One and taught mathematics at the US Air Force Academy. Simeoni has master's degrees from the Air Force Institute of Technology, Chapman University and Cal State Sacramento. He has a bachelor's degree from Northwestern University. He has been an active user of SAS since 1999.
