Verify shipping information and determine shipping method. Choose preferred payment method (purchase order or credit card). Click “Place Your Order.” This online process for ordering spare parts for packaging machinery over the Barry-Wehmiller Web site has proven successful for Campbell Soup, Labatt Breweries and Quaker Oats’ Gatorade Division. Gatorade’s buyer Steve Corder, based in Dallas, TX, purchases spare parts for its B-W Zepf uncaser on Barry-Wehmiller.com twice a week. “I can order parts so much quicker now,” Corder tells Net Sourcing. “I can spend the saved time doing other things, such as searching for harder-to-find items and helping my staff.” He claims time spent ordering spare parts has been reduced by up to 40 percent per week. Campbell Soup’s purchasing agent Jason Hoffman, based in Paris, TX, buys spare parts once a week on the site for its B-W Fleetwood conveyors. “Anytime I can order online, I’d like to because it saves so much time and I can work at my own pace,” he says. Labatt’s buyer Fred Watson, based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, says he is also more relaxed with purchasing now that spare parts for the B-W Pneumatic Scale bottle washer and pasteurizer equipment are available online. “I can do it on my schedule,” he says. “I can even be here on a Saturday or Sunday and still place an order.”
More with order history Barry-Wehmiller.com offers an online order tracking feature, Part Trax, which Gatorade’s Corder uses to review order history. “As you build a history and start seeing what you have used, then you can determine what your expenses are going to be for the year,” he says. “It will help in budgeting and it will help knowing what we want in inventory.” Campbell’s Hoffman uses Part Trax to memorize a list of frequently ordered parts. “I check my Part Trax list first to see if I’ve ordered a part in the past. If I had, I click on it and I’m done. It is even quicker,” he says. Parts can also be selected by using the search option. Separately, Hoffman is pleased that the site offers all the parts Campbell needs online, with Campbell-specific pricing. “There are some Web sites that have catalog prices on the Internet. We get a discount on a lot of the catalog items from other companies, so it doesn’t do me any good to order online,” he says. “This site gives us our prices. I type in my password and I get all our information.” After an order is complete, an e-mail is sent as confirmation within two to three hours. “I really don’t have time to wait two days to verify that my order has been placed,” says Hoffman. “I have confidence to know that if I order online, it is going to get shipped out in a timely manner.” Delivery time is the same as offline—three to five days. Next-day air can also be specified.
