There’s an old saying you’ve probably heard: Speed is life. Although it’s been attributed to aviation — wisdom spouted by fighter-pilots cruising at Mach 1 and faster — no one really knows its origins.
Over the years, it’s been embraced beyond flying circles. Today, it seems a fitting mantra for an increasingly sophisticated technological age where immediacy rules the day.
For many businesses, success is very much tied to speed. Get up to speed. The speed of business. Speed to market.
The need for speed hit a major road bump when the global COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on all our lives. In fact, the wheels came off the bus rather quickly. Suddenly, people who had never uttered the phrase “supply chain” or gave it a moment’s thought were schooled when bare grocery shelves made a pack of toilet paper a prized find.
Nearly every business found itself vulnerable to delivery delays, longer lead times, and out-of-stock inventories. Untying the log jam of goods stuck in storage warehouses and shipping containers dry-docked in some coastal port was no easy feat. Of course, on the sliding scale of the human hierarchy of needs, some delays were simply inconvenient.
Others could be life-threatening.
What if the cooling system at a pharmaceutical lab making life-saving cancer drugs under strict temperature control went out?
Or a hospital’s surgical wing had no AC?
“While we had been planning an expansion of our parts division, the pandemic chaos really lit a fire under us,” says David Fernandez, president of Integrated Cooling Solutions — Florida’s largest independent manufacturer’s rep for commercial HVAC equipment and parts. “We began implementing a plan to help ensure our company and our customers aren’t as vulnerable to supply chain issues.”
Before the pandemic, ICS had generally been able to rely on a three- or five-day turnaround times for parts. But as the world slowed, so did delivery times.
Shaving Wait Times, Big Time
ICS leaders decided to not only reclaim the pre-pandemic turnaround times, but improve upon them. They created a strategic plan for an expansive parts network with the ability to serve customers across Florida. And they committed the capital and manpower to make it reality in short order.
The hub of the network is a 30,000-square-foot distribution center stocked with a deep and growing inventory of original equipment manufacturer (OEM) parts in Plant City. The expansive warehouse is supported by three additional parts warehouses with walk-in retail stores in Tampa, Orlando, and Jacksonville. The parts stores feature a customer service counter and showroom to display smaller and the most in-demand air conditioning parts. Commercial HVAC pros can visit any of the storefronts during weekday hours (8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday-Friday) to see parts and talk with a parts expert. That convenience will expand in 2025 as ICS opens additional retail storefronts in all its remaining markets — including Miami.
With the distribution center and parts stores strategically located in metropolitan areas across Florida, ICS can deliver parts quickly to any area of the state. “Next-day turnaround is the norm for a wide variety of parts, and in many cases, even same-day delivery is available,” says Chase Choate, the ICS parts manager who oversees the state-wide distribution network.
Parts, Parts, More Parts
“The network initially launched with four manufacturer’s brands — AAON, York, Climate Master, and IEC,” Chase reveals. “Right now, we have 250 different types of parts and nearly 5,000 pieces in stock across our network. And that is just the start. We’ll bump that up to 15,000 pieces in the near future, and our inventory will continue to grow as we stock parts for 10 to 15 brands in our network.”
“The depth and breadth of parts stocked by our parts department really demonstrates our level of commitment to our customers,” says Warren Grobbelaar, a sales engineer with ICS. “If equipment shows up on site and parts are dead on arrival, we can usually have replacement parts on site and installed the next day to get the owner’s facility up and running right away. In the past, the owner would have to order the part and it might take two weeks to come in. That’s why ICS is trying to stock as many of the commonly used parts as we can locally.”
Inventory Mixology
Stocking the shelves with the right mix of parts is a precision process focused on analyzing data.
“We use a combination of our internal data for part sales, along with data our manufacturers have that chronicle parts sales in Florida over the past two to four years,” Choate explains. “We use that information to determine the most-needed parts within the state. We’ve also broken it down by the large metropolitan areas — Tampa, Miami, Orlando, and Jacksonville — to pinpoint what parts are needed and where so we can keep the most commonly used parts in stock. This allows us to deliver them right away so our customers don’t have to wait.”
Putting the “I” in “Competitive” Advantage
While OEM competitors have sales offices in Florida, and some have parts stores, they don’t have anything near a 30,000-square-foot warehouse dedicated to servicing customers in the state of Florida. Instead, they have to get parts from their headquarters or factories outside the state.
“Shaving off those critical hours and days is paramount to getting contractors and end-users back up, running, and doing what they are designed to do — whether it’s a school, hotel, hospital, or other structure,” Choate emphasizes. “There aren’t many manufacturers in the state of Florida. They typically tend to be in the northeast, Midwest, or out West.”
That isn’t much help to customers in Florida who are often stuck waiting three to five days for a replacement part to show up.
“For many customers, lead times, the speed of delivery for missing parts, and pricing are their biggest pain points,” Choate adds. “ICS is committed to easing those pain points. Not only do our customers get their parts delivered within 24 hours or the same day, they don’t have to pay for out-of-state shipping or rush charges to receive those parts.”
The expansive, state-wide parts distribution network is all part of ICS’s pledge to go To The Infinite Degree for its customers.
Need to connect with us about parts? We’re here to help.
