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By Counterman
Like many parts professionals, I’m a little bit OCD. My coworkers might tell you that’s an understatement. Organization has always been a pet project of mine, from designing and implementing planograms for the retail floor to maximizing storage space in the areas behind the counter.
For the retail areas of our stores, we receive a great deal of support from the various manufacturers that make up our line cards. Corporate planograms, signage and other materials not only make it easier for us to effectively display retail products, but these professionally designed merchandisers also serve as advertising for the manufacturer. Having a particular category or brand offering consolidated in one place makes it more convenient for a customer to find what they need with minimal assistance, and the manufacturer can display the items they feel showcase their brand more effectively and profitably.
The “back of house” area is an entirely different world when it comes to inventory organization. Warehousing and other non-public-facing storage areas need not be visually appealing to attract customer dollars, but they should be designed to maximize inventory dollars per square foot, and to encourage safe and efficient workflow when picking orders and restocking products.
With products from multiple vendors sharing warehouse space, a simple and logical method of organization is to group items first by manufacturer/brand, and then alphanumerically. For most of our manufacturers, this works well because their product offerings are often similar in size and packaging. For manufacturers with varied product lines, this becomes a bit more challenging. A chassis parts inventory will include a wide variety of package sizes and shapes, making it difficult to store long items like drag links in the same space as a relatively compact ball joint package, or the large irregular shapes found when organizing boxed control arms. A well-defined part numbering system can help alleviate some of these storage issues, but there always seems to be one or more outliers, leaving the stock clerk to figure out how to shelve them effectively.
In the OEM dealership world, parts generally come from a single source. With a single “brand,” and often cryptic part numbering systems, the alphanumeric inventory method becomes nearly impossible. Consecutive part numbers could (theoretically) be as varied as a bolt, a set of brake pads and a door shell, none of which would sensibly be shelved together. For most dealer parts departments, a “bin location” system is necessary to customize and maximize storage. Each part number is assigned a location code, corresponding to a specific shelf, drawer or bin somewhere in the warehouse.
The “bin location” method offers flexibility, but adds another level of complexity to organization. Shelving units are more uniformly organized, with like-sized items stored together regardless of function or category. As parts transition through their natural life cycles, they can be added to and removed from their locations, keeping faster-moving parts closer to the counter for ease of picking, or moving a part’s location to accommodate larger stocking quantities of that item. In some cases, it also can allow for items that are frequently sold together to be stocked in the same location. Finally, location coding allows for less-experienced warehouse personnel to find items simply by finding a location and verifying the part number on the order, rather relying on someone’s memory of “where we keep that widget.”
The drawback is in the duplication. Each part number must be assigned additional information when it is initially stocked, and some store-level inventory systems are not designed to accommodate a field for location. Further, if a location code is entered incorrectly, never assigned or a part is mis-stocked somewhere in the warehouse, it easily becomes “lost,” and can be nearly impossible to find until an inventory is performed. Most dealerships maintain a perpetual “bin count” schedule, checking a few bins each day to keep up with this task, making corrections as necessary.
No matter your organizational method, keeping a sense of order is important when designing your back of house area. Minimizing the amount of empty space (not including that reserved for future expansion) maximizes the value of your inventory per square foot. Physical characteristics of some parts will often dictate their unique storage needs, but wherever we can streamline the process of stocking and retrieving parts, we increase efficiency and worker productivity.
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By Counterman
Valvoline has been recognized for providing excellent customer service and has been ranked by Forbes on its “Best Customer Service 2025” list.
link hidden, please login to view was the top-ranked instant oil change company and placed 18th among the 300 brands on the list. The Forbes customer service list was based on surveys of 181,000 people in the United States who rated their interactions with more than 3,500 brands. Only the top 300-rated companies were included in the list. “Every year we serve millions of guests, and our goal is to deliver the very best customer service with each oil change and preventive automotive maintenance service,” said Laura Carpenter, Valvoline’s chief customer officer. “Our team members and franchise partners are focused and committed to go above and beyond for our guests each and every day. I’m proud of our franchise partners, teams and our retail service center managers who are delivering for our guests.”
A news release from
link hidden, please login to view explained that customers gave the company a 4.7 out of 5-star rating* for its service. That’s based on a survey of more than 1 million Valvoline Instant Oil Change customers. The post
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By Counterman
The aftermarket future is bright for
link hidden, please login to view as a trio of company executives noted during a media conversation at link hidden, please login to view. Masahiro Shiiya, president, AISIN Global Aftermarket; Scott Turpin, president and CEO, AISIN World Corp. of America; and Dwayne Bates, senior vice president, Aftermarket, AISIN World Corp. of America discussed a range of topics about their plans for the global aftermarket segment, including the formation of AISIN Aftermarket & Service of America Inc., as well as an expanded product lineup. “It’s Mr. Shiiya’s vision—he’s been looking at building a maintenance empire from the top all the way down to the tire. Any maintenance-related issue, he’s going to try to fix it,” Bates said in an interview after the press conference. “He’s been focusing on wiper blades, filters—anything that would be a common maintenance part—and tires are included in that. So we’ve partnered with a tire manufacturer and developed our tires.”
AISIN had a range of tires on display in the booth under the AITERRA brand name, including the AIECO EC50 tire for passenger cars, the AICROSS CR60 for SUVs and the AIWAGON WA70 for delivery van applications.
The creation of
link hidden, please login to view was another big headline for the company at the show. The new company will be formed through a merger between AWTEC—an AISIN company focused on transmission remanufacturing—and the aftermarket business unit of AISIN World Corp. of America (AWA). With this move, AISIN leadership said it will expand its manufacturing capabilities for service parts, leveraging and uniting the combined expertise of AWTEC and AWA Aftermarket Sales. Operations also will be streamlined and optimized to increase efficiencies and better position the aftermarket team for growth. “Right now, the merger here in the US is just taking place. It’ll be effective April 1,” Bates explained. “With this merger, it’s not a departure from what we normally have done. We sell 80% of AWTEC-branded product through our sales organization already. It’s an alignment and correlation of our departments, making it more streamlined and more effective for the customer.”
There also was plenty of talk about the future of the automotive market and the impact of new vehicle technologies.
“One of the things that is changing is the parts proliferation from everybody,” said Larrow Kaufman, senior sales manager for the North American Aftermarket at Aisin World Corp. of America. “We’re looking at ICE vehicles and asking, ‘Is that part mix changing in regard to cars being more reliable now than they’ve ever been.’ Then, on the EV vehicle side, we ask, ‘Are some of those parts the same or are they different?’ I think everyone is looking to decide what the next thing is and make sure that they have the product range to cover that.”
Then, there was the big question: What’s the outlook for 2025?
“One of the nice things about the automotive aftermarket is that, regardless of what we’ve been through—be it COVID, be it pre-pandemic, be it post-pandemic—we’ve been relatively steady,” Kaufman said. “I think the market’s still looking at single-digit growth throughout the year, and we plan to take advantage of that.”
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