Inventory Management

Our Inventory Management Process

At Hynes, we understand how important inventory management is to our customers. Our process begins with designing the most agile and flexible inventory management program that best supports your demand planning and operational schedules. At Hynes, we practice proactive inventory management—meaning we work actively with your planning team to assess your demand forecasts and required product release schedules. From there, we design an inventory program that both meets your production needs and provides the best economic order quantities to keep your costs low and inventory turns high.

Highly data-driven, our experienced sourcing and customer service teams constantly evaluate raw material lead times from suppliers, assess customer forecasts and analyze historical data to determine which of our programs will best suit our customers’ fulfillment. Each program—Just in Time, Made to Stock and Project-Based Fulfillment—is designed to offer our customers the flexibility they need to get their products the moment they need them.

We also stay ahead of market trends and maintain constant contact with our suppliers and our customers, as we fully understand the dynamic nature and impact of the steel market on the raw material supply chain. Our strategic sourcing team is world-class in managing our steel supply, and we update our customers on supply chain changes due to market conditions or industry nuances as they occur. Staying proactive in managing supply chain issues allows us to minimize supply chain interruptions and cost impacts due to rapid changes in material costs.

Hynes manages Just in Time fulfillment programs for some of our largest customers where they run lean production, may not have an ability to store inventory at their plant location, or have high variability in their daily production schedules. Just in Time fulfillment requires extreme flexibility and agility in order management and production processes. Orders previously placed may change the day of shipment or may need additional items, which would require immediate production. To support Just in Time fulfillment, Hynes runs production mills with dedicated tooling, facilitates ongoing advanced material procurement, and produces and/or holds stock in inventory to ensure parts are ready as needed.

Our Made to Stock programs are designed for customers that require shorter lead times. We work closely with our customers to collaborate on forecasts and use historic customer demand data to schedule production and to produce parts well in advance of an order request. We also have the capability to manage inventories through a min/max re-stock program, manage consignment in a customer warehouse and closely monitor inventory levels in our customers’ portals to trigger production. For all customers that require Hynes to stock product, we will package and store the product to support short lead times and ship based on specified release orders.

Designed for customers with massive amounts of labor activity, our Project-Based Fulfillment program ensures we supply pre-built racking products for large-scale projects. This program serves customers that are deploying programs such as a utility grid, solar farm or a complete retrofit of a distribution warehouse. Anticipating a customer’s start date, we pre-build inventory so the product is available when the installation team arrives at the jobsite.