Supply chain management delivers results

Toyota has a national contract to supply forklifts to the Postal Service. Enersys has a national contract to supply industrial batteries for those forklifts. Until recently, USPS would accept the forklifts and batteries as separate orders and then have to install the batteries before the forklifts were ready to move mail.

Thanks to the Delivery and Industrial Equipment—Telecommunications Category Manager Center, which oversees both contracts, Toyota now accepts the Enersys batteries on our behalf and installs them onsite. That saves USPS money on bill processing, shipping and battery installation and — even better — the forklifts arrive ready to use.

Moving the battery installation further upstream in our chain is just one more example of what supply chain man­agement is all about — creativity, collaboration and cost reduction.