The Foundation of Service
By Tom Hammel

These days, the pace of residential construction in America keeps the national steamrollers at work night and day. And the distributors who feed the machine must always be one step ahead of it.

One of the more high profile examples of this wholesale reinvention of America is The Glen in Glenview, IL. Once the site of the Glenview Naval Air Station, this 1,100-acre parcel is being reborn as a master-planned residential and commercial redevelopment project that will create in essence an entirely new micro-burb of Chicago. And it will be a pricey one at that: Homes, ranging in price from $400,000 to over $1 million, have been selling so briskly that contractors are under extra pressure to maintain schedules -- not surprising when houses sell before they are completed.

As a result it should also come as no surprise that reliable delivery is the number one criteria for contractors on the site.

Service is Job 1
"Service is No.," says Jim Dunlavy, field supervisor for Alright Concrete Co., of Streamwood, IL, the lead concrete subcontractor for all of the residential and some of the commercial jobs at the Glen project. "Our distributors deliver all our supplies to us, so when we can get our supplies on time, it helps out quite a bit with scheduling work and getting the pours done on time. But they have to deliver the supplies in a timely manner, that's absolutely No. 1 for us."

Martin Nieto, a foreman for Alright Concrete, concurs.

"My main priority and our biggest demand of a distributor is that they be on time with deliveries -- that they get materials to me on time," he says.

And for this project at The Glen, as well as its other projects across Chicagoland, Alright depends on Multiple Concrete Accessories (MCA) of Palatine.

"I count on MCA for all my supplies: drain tile, duraform ties, window wells, bucks, and rebar," Martin explains. "We get deliveries from them everyday."

The Inventory Challenge

Meeting this "get it right, right now" expectation is the challenge that MCA must rise to meet -- without fail -- several times a day, every day!

"The critical aspect of the service we provide is making sure they get all the products they need on that first delivery each day," says Mike Longfield, president of MCA. "A normal ticket from Alright might have fifteen items, and of those there are probably six that are really critical. If they don't get them, it could push back a pour by a half-day or a day. That's why we have to have a very high total fulfillment rate. A box of form ties can shut them down until they show up and a foreman like Martin could have six workers sitting there idle."