Service goes beyond products
By Staff -- Purchasing, 11/19/1998
When buyers and distributors form strategic alliances, many times the relationship penetrates far deeper than the products being supplied. Such has been the case with a four-year-old alliance between electrical products distributor Graybar Electric Co. and the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative (nhec).According to Janie Bowie, nhec purchasing administrator, Graybar is the state utility's sole source for line hardware and associated supplies. Over the course of their relationship, Graybar and nhec work very closely together to reduce overall costs and streamline processes.
"We do lots of things that relate to general problem solving and not to our business with nhec directly," says Jack Kolvick, Graybar branch manager in Manchester, N.H. "My salespeople work with the cooperative on a daily basis."
Graybar's problem-solving ap-proach recently helped nhec improve its inventory management system. "Inventory updates weren't done on a real-time basis," says Bowie. Working with Graybar, nhec personnel now provide inventory updates on a daily basis, much improving inventory management.
nhec also credits Graybar's efforts in helping the cooperative restore power to customers during a series of harsh ice storms last January. Graybar stayed open and met all of nhec's needs. "We had no downtime with equipment because of the storm," says Bowie. "Graybar was excellent."
Graybar and nhec now are testing a new system to further reduce the cost of distributing MRO items. nhec has a central warehouse and 11 district locations. Graybar is "aggressively helping us to reduce costs" through a pilot program being run at two sites, says Bowie.
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