Know-How Exchange : Customer Behavior

Printing, delivery services, dry cleaning, MarketingProfs "URGENT!" questions, some services e.g. home appraisal services... you can also do a Google search on words like "expedited" and "rush prices" and "express delivery" and see what you see...

Dear Hans

It might surprise you that the well planned process chemical, instrumentation and control industries operate a premium service for short deliveries.

大多数制造工厂运作24/7和365天s a year, so to avoid shutdowns through unplanned maintenance (Otherwise known as a breakdown!) they would need to keep an inventory of every single critical component in stock. This can prove prohibitively expensive, so they use planned maintenance and an emergency supply service to get them out of a hole.

I used to be the EMEA manager for a bursting-disk manufacturer (Disks which go pop when the pressure gets too high, rather than having the plant and the adjacent town wiped off the map) and a non-replaceable disk could cost £120. With most plants employing about 100 of them, keeping a surplus inventory would cost about £12,000. However, if they don’t keep spares, shutting down the plant can cost £12,000 an hour in lost profits.

I set up a programme where we offered customers and users of competitor’s disks alike an emergency service which operated when they needed it. For about £1,200 they could have a single replacement disk delivered within 24 hours if they were unfortunate enough to need it. Usually, one or two would do the trick to rescue a situation and they could order some extra disks at ordinary prices so that they could replace other disks which might have been showing stress earlier than planned maintenance suggested.

I used to worry a bit about the 10 times premium we charged for getting our factory to do something quickly. That was until Dow lost all their disks one December and Europe lost its nylon production. We got the emergency replacement order on Christmas Eve and on Christmas day we delivered the replacements to the airport. In cargo, the only plane waiting was a 747. Apparently that was all that they could charter on 25th December, so our bill paled into insignificance to the cost they were prepared to pay to get them delivered quickly.

I hope that this is useful to you


Steve Alker
Unimax Solutions

Dental laboratories often work under time constraints and dentists will typically pay more for shortened lead times.