CAN YOU TIME THE SPARE
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Camberley Auto Factors' 20 car spares outlets confine their business to relatively small geographical areas, enabling short delivery times. Fitters ring their orders through on the telephone while inspecting the vehicle and by the time they have changed the oil, the spares have arrived.
That sort of delivery allows car workshops to run efficiently on a minimal parts stock. CV Spares aims to offer that level of service to truck operators.
The company is based just off the M25 at Colnbrook near Heathrow airport and it operates within a 15-mile radius enabling any of the 24,000 parts stocked to be delivered within two hours.
Retail chain
Factors make their money by "cutting out the middle man", says David Mills CV Spares' general manager. Traditionally the component manufacturer supplied the truck builder who then supplied its dealers who sold the part to the operator. Factors buy from the component manufacturer and sell directly to the operator — thereby cutting out one part of the retail chain.
It is in the area of quality that factors have to work particularly hard to instill confidence in operators.
Mills explains CV Spares' strategy on sourcing. The first approach is to the Original Equipment (OE) supplier. If it is unable to supply, CV Spares will try to secure parts from another OE supplier. For instance, if Duron was the OE supplier for a brake lining but it was unable to supply factors, CV Spares would ask Mintex DON to manufacture a lining to the same specification. Either way, the quality is without question, says Mills.
"On safety critical items you can always get OE or equivalent," says Mills. However, he will consider non-OE suppliers for non-safety critical spares.
When assessing a potential supplier Mills will look closely at three areas: 0 Does the supplier have OE fitment of other parts? 0 What are the warranty returns like?
0 How long has the company been in parts manufacturing business?
Many would-be suppliers visit CV Spares to try and pick up business, but very few succeed, and those who do hav.e to pass a strict vetting procedure including factory visits.
Mills is concerned at a trend he has noticed. Salesmen are playing on• people's ignorance of B55750, he says. "They are coming in and saying that their company has B55750 like the OE supplier, so the products must be of equal quality". That is not true, and anyone who knows about BS5750 will see through the sales pitch, says Mills. "There is a trust between operator and factor, that trust is often abused."
Like everyone else in the industry, Mills is waiting for a product liability case to come to court, but CV Spares is prepared. It has all its part numbers logged on a computer which is also programmed with the name of the supplier and the date stocks we've received. If a customer's record has an invoice number that traces the part to CV Spares then the original supplier can also be traced.
Despite the fact that many truck builders see factors as "cowboy outfits" many offer a good service with quality products. In mainland Europe the factor as we know it does not exist on any sizeable scale. Maybe post 1992 will see the concept exported to the other EC countries.