HandCraft Services Addresses Inventory Management with SSI SCHAEFER’s Solution

Since the late 1960s, HandCraft Services has been supplying the medical industry with high-quality linen, apparel products, and providing commercial laundry services.

As the market leader, HandCraft Services has a unique service offering that operates quietly fulfilling a major necessity.

The Challenge

With over 900 clients, keeping up with inventory can be quite difficult. Plus, providing and servicing an array of products like blankets and towels to various organizations can lend itself to dealing with large amounts of paperwork.

Having employees walk to gather items for each client can wreak havoc on even the best pair of walking shoes. In order to save some steps, employees were sometimes substituting products and accuracy rates weren’t as high as HandCraft wanted. Making certain everyone was pulling product correctly was simply taking too much time. In addition, reconciling lost articles from previous pick-ups had the company trying to recoup those costs - and not always successful.

With the HandCraft client base growing rapidly, more product was coming on-line for servicing clients. Additional SKUs were only adding to the frustration. Increased inventory was becoming difficult to manage and pack-out got worse as orders multiplied. HandCraft needed a solution for storage space, inventory management, and help during fulfillment.

Along with speed, the company needed to maintain a clean environment for storage. The solution had to accommodate placing clean products into storage while picking almost simultaneously. Being a market leader and innovator in the industry, Handcraft begins each project with innovation at the forefront. This challenge would warrant a unique solution process but an innovative one, and so Jeff Diehl,

General Manager of the Retail Division for HandCraft Services, sought help. There had to be a better way to provide faster speeds for servicing clients, gain more storage, and track inventory within a clean environment.