Customers
Client Profile
GE Modular Space (“ModSpace”) leases and sells mobile and modular buildings. Headquartered in Devon, PA, GE ModSpace is one of the largest suppliers of mobile and modular buildings with over 100 sales and service facilities throughout the U.S., Canada and Mexico and a fleet of more than 125,000 buildings.
Trailer Fleet Services (formerly known as Transport International Pool) is based in Wayne, PA and is a single source provider for all aspects of trailer fleet maintenance. For nearly 50 years it has been a recognized leader in over-the-road trailer solutions, which today includes everything from leasing, renting, financial services, insurance, maintenance, remarketing and asset tracking.
GE’s Trailer Fleet Services business has 135,000 over-the-road trailer assets, and operates a North American network of 100 branch locations staffed by a sales and an operations team of 900 employees.
The Challenge
In 2001, GE’s TIP/ModSpace division spent over $50 million on parts procurement. A part is any piece of material directly used in the modification, repair or maintenance of a unit.
In 2001, 25% of GE’s parts procurement went through negotiated contracts and 75% went through local vendors. TIP/ModSpace did not have an automated inventory control system that would enable branches to proactively manage required parts. As a result, GE was losing millions of dollars.
The Solution
A New Level of Control
With a business as diverse and geographically distributed as GE’s, it is vitally important that responsibilities can be passed to managers at the local level. Slingshot’s unique span of control and unlimited roles functionality is used to give each employee across GE’s hierarchy their own unique view of the functions and information they are responsible for.
eTools, Slingshot’s proprietary application editor, has been a critical tool in supporting GE’s continued growth. Slingshot’s Upgrade Assist utility has been used to automatically upgrade GE’s unique changes to future releases of the software. In short, it has given GE the power to extend its applications without programming and has significantly reduced GE’s ongoing cost of delivering system changes that address new business needs.
Slingshot Software Systems
GE ModSpace and Trailer Fleet Services have deployed Slingshot systems to manage and control inventory costs throughout their 180 U.S. service facilities. Slingshot’s Inventory and Warehouse Management and Requisition Management applications have been installed and integrated with GE’s central business systems and service branch infrastructure.
Each GE branch can now effectively manage the movement of required parts, enabling more efficient procurement processes.
The implementation has resulted in significant savings for both GE and its customers.
