CINCINNATI — Datalliance, an independent supplier of vendor managed inventory (VMI) services, has announced that Canton, Ohio-based Timken Co. has selected the Datalliance VMI service to support its expanding VMI program.

Timken plans to implement VMI with its channel partners in the automotive, heavy-duty and industrial aftermarket businesses. The company will initially implement VMI with representative distributors in all three aftermarket segments; then roll out the program to all key distributors in each of the segments.

“As a leading aftermarket supplier, Timken is always looking for technologies that will help us strengthen our value proposition to our end-customers and streamline the way we work with our distributors,” said John Ziemianski, supply chain manager – automotive aftermarket. “We recently implemented a standard ERP platform worldwide to strengthen our global capabilities and provide the foundation for strategic e-commerce solutions such as VMI.”

Tom Tecklenburg, director –Global Automotive Aftermarket, explained that hanging industry factors have put added pressure on Timken’s channel partner network. “Technology advances have fueled the pace of product change in our industry and accelerated the proliferation of aftermarket parts. As this dramatic increase in parts continues, we know that managing inventories and working cooperatively with our channel partners is even more critical. We need to take advantage of VMI and other systems to increase forecast accuracy and working capital turns. VMI is so important, because as it gives us the capability to proactively identify and satisfy end-customer demand in this dynamic environment. We want to make sure that our end-customers, the professional installers, can easily find and purchase the parts they need from one of our more than 10,000 channel partner locations.”