Write it down

Cunningham Supply Company understands the importance of documenting the value it provides customers.

He was in trouble and he knew it.  The project manager for an automotive parts manufacturer thought he’d ordered the special chamfering tool needed to make 2,000 prototype parts for a new customer.  Because he’d been busy watching a million other project details, he simply forgot to place the order for the tool, which had an eight-week lead time.  Now, one day before production was scheduled to begin, the project manager realized he didn’t have the specialized tool the job required.

His boss was steaming mad and so was the president of the company.  Someone would have to tell the customer they wouldn’t be able to complete the job on time.  The delay could jeopardize an account potentially worth millions of dollars.

Rick Glauthier Cunningham Supply Co., CEO

The project manager turned to Rick Glauthier of Cunningham Supply Company in Akron, Ohio.

“Man, I am in serious trouble,” he told Glauthier, Cunningham CEO.  “My boss just told me he can’t believe how disappointed he is in me.  What can you do to help me?”

Glauthier immediately contacted a local machine shop that grinds carbide cutting tools.  Working all night long, the shop took a standard tool and modified it to specifications Glauthier provided.  It wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough to do the job until the proper tool arrived.  By the next morning, the parts manufacturer was making parts.

The project manager breathed a sigh of relief, his boss was happy and the president wouldn’t have to apologize to an irate customer.  Case closed, right?  Not quite. 

Glauthier took one final step to put the icing on the cake.  He drafted a letter to the project manager briefly detailing the actions he took and expressing his appreciation that the project manager came to Cunningham Supply for help.  He then sent a copy of the letter to the project manager’s boss, the president and the purchasing department.

“If you don’t tell them what you do to bring them value, they won’t know,” Glauthier says.

That final step — providing documentation that demonstrates how the activities they perform help their customers — is a valuable tool that has become a habit for all Cunningham Supply salespeople. It’s proved invaluable time and again.

Spread the word around
Glauthier credits his No. 1 supplier, Sandvik Coromant, with getting Cunningham started on the path to demonstrating value.

“They are a big believer in demonstrating value-add,” he says.  “That’s how they go to market with their products. You have to demonstrate what you’re doing at all times, what value you bring to the table.”

Using Sandvik-developed report forms, salespeople provide customers with detailed results from tests they’ve performed using a new cutter, carbide insert, drill or other tools.  The reports explain the type of tool tested, changes in gradings, coatings, feeds and speeds or other parameters, and how they increased output.

“We don’t want to go in with cheaper stuff and say, ‘I found an insert for $2 less.’  We want to show them how we reduced their cycle time from 15 minutes to 12 minutes and 12 seconds, and how that will save them $38,000 this year,” he says.

Glauthier says other suppliers, including Master Chemical, also have excellent documentation programs that Cunningham uses to demonstrate its value to customers.

“We’ve also developed some of our own forms,” he says.  “What we’re really trying to do is prove our worth.  We want to make sure customers believe they’re dealing with someone who brings them value.”

Without documentation to back them up, they look like just another supplier who buys lunch for the guys because they buy supplies from them.

Touch all bases
Cunningham never sends documentation to just one person.  Salespeople make sure that all of the known buying influences in an account know what’s going on.  It keeps everyone in the loop and helps introduce the company to new contacts that might be valuable to know one day.

“When we send an e-mail to an engineer, for example, we’ll copy his boss or someone else involved in the project.  It’s a little extra work but it pays dividends in the end because we don’t get blindsided by someone we might not know,” Glauthier says.

The wisdom in that approach surfaced recently when a major customer brought in out-of-town executives to meet with Cunningham and other local suppliers to discuss how to improve an assembly process that was losing money.  Because Cunningham presented the executives with a notebook full of documents demonstrating the ways it helped the company in the past, it gave them immediate credibility.

The company manufactures front-wheel drivetrain assemblies and needed to boost production from about 2,400 to 3,000 assemblies a day.  Cunningham began a series of tests to see if it could speed production by switching carbide inserts.

The tests proved that the problem wasn’t with the quality of the inserts.  Rather, inconsistent forgings provided by the manufacturer caused repeated production delays.  For example, an operator might set a machine to remove a sixteenth-of-an-inch of material from a forging.  That works fine on one forging, but if the surface on the next forging is three-sixteenths-of-inch thicker, the insert might break or fail prematurely.

Where did Cunningham learn about the inconsistent forgings?  From the machine operators.

“Nobody ever bothered to talk to those guys,” Glauthier says.  “We’re in there all the time dealing with them.  We’re their buddies.  They’re one of the buying influences we deal with on a regular basis.”

It’s an example of how Cunningham’s dedication to documenting their value-adding activities from the shop floor to the top floor paid off.  Glauthier is convinced that because Cunningham documents activities that save money and improve processes, customers are less willing to look elsewhere for MRO suppliers.

“We tell them everything we do,” Glauthier says.  “So, when a competitor comes knocking on their door and says, “I can do this better and cheaper,’ they’re more apt to say, ‘I bet you can’t do it better.’”

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