Lakewood, NJ — Coni-Seal, a manufacturer of aftermarket undercar parts, has announced the results of a new inventory-management program it launched in 2005. The company said it drastically improved its inventory position and drove increased sales while maintaining high service levels after implementing a solution provided by CTS Systems of Houston, TX. Coni-Seal utilizes CTS’ hosted application to analyze current and historical inventory levels with data analysis and forecasting algorithms.

The company said it decided to launch the program to address its growing investment in inventory in recent years and its inability to accurately forecast dynamic customer demand.

“Two years ago, our inventory levels were growing faster than we were able to manage effectively, we couldn’t forecast accurately and we couldn’t accurately tie raw material procurement to customer demand,” said Frank Pagano, CEO of Coni-Seal. “CTS’ application has enabled Coni-Seal to improve in every one of those categories, and customer satisfaction remains high.”

Coni-Seal reported the following results from the use of CTS’ solution over a one-year period ending in January 2007:

* Sales have increased 31.5 percent

* On-hand inventory decreased 26.4 percent

* Available supply chain inventory (on-hand plus on-order) decreased 21.2 percent

* Service levels maintained at 94-95 percent

The CTS system is a hosted application that automatically downloads Coni-Seal’s inventory, returns and procurement data on a nightly basis. CTS’ forecasting methodology then looks at month-to-month history of SKU velocity, aggregate demand and frequency along with currency of the demand for every SKU. Coni-Seal executives utilize secure web access to access the CTS System to manage their inventory, view the results, consider system recommendations for product management and make critical planning decisions. Executives measure the effectiveness of the inventory management application by viewing key performance indicators (KPIs) over their desktops. Examples include gross margins, revenue changes, turns, GMROI, service level and inventory investment level.

“We have been able to correlate significant improvements in our KPIs to the data analysis the CTS system provides,” said Pagano. “Supply chain challenges are haunting the aftermarket, but applications like this are making a real difference. The success of this project is totally dependent on the opportunity we’ve had to collaborate with our customer base. We’ve been able to help our customers manage undercar part inventories at their warehouses, which further improves the efficiencies of the supply chain and has helped them improve service with their customers.”

To learn more about Coni-Seal, go to: http://www.coni-seal.com.

For more information about CTS, go to: http://www.ctssys.com.