PSQ Newsletter

Ingersoll Rand aims to create and sustain safe, comfortable, and efficient environments. The business employs more than 48,000 people around the world in hundreds of facilities, containing 67 manufacturing plants. With its family of brands - including Club Car®, Ingersoll Rand®, Schlage®, Thermo King®, and Trane® - the company works to enhance the quality and comfort of air in homes and buildings, transport and protect food and perishables, secure homes and commercial properties, and increase industrial productivity and efficiency.

Not long ago, these various business units operated independently with minimal standard work and materials management talent. At the same time, key performance indicators on delivery, inventory turns, and inventory accuracy were in need of organization-wide improvement.

"We needed to create a common approach as we moved to an operating company," says Clark Ponthier CPIM, vice president of sales, inventory and operations planning, and materials management. As overall leader for materials management in the company, Ponthier believed that APICS could be a valuable partner in helping Ingersoll Rand transform materials management into a core competency through APICS education, certification, deployment of standards, and more strategic organizational design.

In the very early stages of the APICS journey, Frank Pinheiro CPIM CIRM CSCP, Ingersoll Rand business development leader, was instrumental in expanding the partnership with APICS. A long-time APICS member, Pinheiro holds Certified in Production and Inventory Management (CPIM), Certified in Integrated Resource Management, and Certified Supply Chain Professional (CSCP) designations.

APICS was not new at Ingersoll Rand; however, at the time, personnel from the various brands were enrolled as members individually, rather than putting the power of a corporate membership to work. Pinheiro says he and his colleagues were optimistic about enhancing the relationship.

Approximately two years ago, the journey began. Fortunately, executive level support was there from the beginning, and Ingersoll Rand leaders agreed to fully fund the education and certification of every materials manager and some other key personnel worldwide; provide training, classes, and materials to employees; pay the certification exam fee; and reimburse travel expenses.

All students were expected to finish CPIM training and achieve the designation within 18 months, and new hires were required to achieve certification or commit to obtain it within 18 months of their start dates. Perhaps most importantly, however, Pinheiro and his colleagues took the list of APICS members at Ingersoll Rand—at that time, about 65—and converted them to part of a whole corporate membership. Then, they published information on this new membership option in the corporate newsletter and encouraged more employees to explore what APICS has to offer.

"I also sent out an email to all of Ingersoll Rand’s APICS members at the time, letting them know the purpose and the goal of bringing everybody together to share experiences from one sector to another," Pinheiro explains. "In this way, we could begin taking advantage of the collective strength of the combined members. Today, we have more than 200 APICS members."

Making the right play

The next step was to develop a standard approach to materials management and apply it across the organization. Ponthier was in charge of this undertaking. "One of the first things I did was to get the materials experts in the company to become a part of the Ingersoll Rand Materials Council," he says. "We wanted to determine the overall maturity level around materials in the company, so members of the council visited and evaluated our facilities. Our findings varied; some were in relatively good shape, but many had significant room for improvement in terms of knowing the basic fundamentals of materials management."

He and his colleagues responded by developing and deploying what they call the "Materials Management Playbook," which was comprised of standard work instructions and training materials for many core materials management processes. A glossary based on the APICS Dictionary and the APICS body of knowledge was used extensively throughout the development stages.

"The playbook includes the most basic materials processes," Ponthier says. "We developed this playbook and trained everyone to deploy it within a year - which they did. One of the things APICS really helped us with during this process was a common way of doing the work."

For example, he says some of Ingersoll Rand’s factories weren’t cycle counting and didn’t understand ABC classification. "It was clear that we had to incorporate APICS terminology into the standard work from the very beginning," Pinheiro adds. "It became the mantra; it is just so fundamental."

Pinheiro adds that, at first, he felt other employees lacked knowledge of tools and references such as the
APICS Dictionary. However, now everybody else is "picking up on the terminology and adopting that standard approach." And as that common language permeates the organization, employees are able to incorporate these principles into the way they do business. In fact, 67 factories now follow the standard work built upon APICS principles and the APICS Dictionary.

"These past three years have been very exciting because of the connections, the relationships, and knowing that we are also contributing to APICS," Pinheiro says.

The first wave of APICS training and certification is nearly complete. New CPIM designee Rich Barrett is manager of sales, inventory, and operations planning in the residential comfort and efficiency division of Ingersoll Rand. He says the partnership between Ingersoll Rand and APICS provided him with the learning environment he needed to successfully complete his certification. "The module content was extremely relevant in our fast-changing business climate, and it provided me with a foundation of knowledge that will help drive supply chain and operational efficiencies in our business," he adds.

Director of global sales, inventory, operations planning, and materials management Michelle Stark also recently earned her CPIM designation. She says, "APICS certification has provided a foundation for materials acumen within our global business. We have increased consistency within our operations, and it is easier to collaborate across sites."

As a result of these advancements, delivery has improved more than 70 percent since 2011, compliance with the Materials Management Playbook is at 90 percent globally, and there has been a substantial improvement in inventory accuracy across numerous factories. However, Pinheiro notes that the greatest advantage is achieving a common language that enables employees to communicate much
more effectively and thus really become one organization. Still, he doesn’t think Ingersoll Rand has begun to extract all the benefits that are available yet.

"That will come over time, once we train all of our membership," Pinheiro says, "and it’s certainly moving in that direction. Now, we have cross-member participation when we do the training. It’s not just one business; it’s all businesses and many countries."

Ponthier agrees, adding that he feels they are "really elevating the role of materials managers ... We’ve created consistent, standard job titles, descriptions, roles, and responsibilities," he says, "and all of these are built on the APICS body of knowledge."