Fastenal Corporation
How does Fastenal compete in the market place against big online supply Companies such as McMaster-Carr? Explain.
Fastenal refers to manufacturing and distributing company deals with hardware goods and construction materials. The corporate has induced the loyalty of many customers because they provide efficient products that help the company to induce a comparative advantage over other competitors. With time, many online supplies of the industrial hardware products and construction materials supplies are established to sell in the competitive market. Fastenal incorporates high moral products to maintain a wide range of loyal customers. Besides, they ensure that their products are of high quality after sale services are also availed because they distribute secure and reliable means of payment.
Consequently, they have some branches which display attractive products. Besides, customers who have a McMaster-Car Website catalog have the capacity of displaying products that are not yet availed in stock. Furthermore, through the website, customers can view the quality of item and inventory products. However, customers may face a considerable amount of problems when searching for the right equipment because of lack of images flyers and catalogs while some of the products end up missing to totality. However, such an issue is rare in Fastenal because the customer usually checks the transaction process after visiting the equipment. Notably, the company ensures that it offers various professional services to loyal customers to attract a wide range of audience and also ensure that they induce a comparative edge over other competitors as would be compared to the online and supply chain.
What are some of the factors/reasons provided (list at least 3) regarding converting part of the Fastenal facility to a 21 million dollar AS/RS system?
A scale factor is an important aspect that Fastenal Company should consider the fact that the company produces large scale amounts of goods. As such, the company can have more economic scales of benefit which have the capacity of facilitating about $21 million of AS/ RS system which makes it hard for other competitors to use when they figure out the high cost of maintaining the complex system.
Another factor is the chain of distribution and supply chain system that helps the corporation to save the extra cost. Besides, the management can offer products of quality choice at a relatively low cost than other competitors that help the company to have notable sales leading to high profits which helps the company to achieve the AS/AR system.
The company has been able to raise stock price over time, and as such, Fastenal Company can get high investment return benefits from investors because of relatively lower costs, and this induces high opportunity returns. Because of the high investment from the overall market investors, the company has been used to use various operational improvements.
What are some of the discussions provided regarding holding inventories at Fastenal?
Inventory management at Fastenal can be considered appropriate. For instance, it holds an inventory both in their branches and warehoused to ensure that goods are always availed to potential customers. As such, the company has been able to induce a comparative advantage over other competitors because of the inventory holding and is prone when customers visit the different branches and are satisfied when they meet their demand because of holding their inventory process. The reason for holding inventory is to ensure that the stock risk which bottlenecks the customers and put the industry in a great risk of making losses.
The products commonly purchases are not usually available in the market because of issues associated with low production and low demand. However, Fastenal Corporate hold inventory to attain high sales and avail products that are immediately ordered of the and as such the company can attract and retain both the loyal and potential regular customers at a considerable amount of time. The approach of holding inventory in Fastenal Company has the capacity of supporting the company to induce quality products at a short period thus putting less pressure on the employees of the company thus putting the company in a good position of retaining more customers.
Explain in general terms how the picking process on the conveyor belt is done.
Conveyor belt are employed to ease the work of moving products from one place to another within the company setup. The machines are useful because they can also handle complex and loosely bagged goods. Furthermore, they are usually used to pick the conveyor located by the guidelines of picking. For Fastenal, the process of picking on the conveyor belt is conducted manually, although through the help of automated ways where machines are usually used to pick and move products from one place to another.
In Fastenal company, some products manufactured were passed through the conveyor belts and later the machines were used to collect the products and passed them to the packaging department. Boxes are usually used to pack the goods, before taking them to back to the conveyor belts and take them inventory holding tracks after verification. Fastenal and many production films have employed the use of a conveyor belt to ease the work of moving goods from one place to another. The different picking process method is used to ensure effective operation process.
References
https://www.fastenal.com/en/3/about-us
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