Strategic purchasing
October 1st 2007 The "just in time" (JIT) concept has
spread throughout industry as a
means of reducing stock
inventories and warehousing costs.
It works well for planned
manufacturing, but what happens
in an emergency? This is a problem
that has been troubling John
Pethers, national service director at
ELGA Process Water.
"We build ion exchange plant to
order, and supply replacement ion
exchange resin to customers as
part of planned maintenance
contracts.We also have customers
who need replacement resin in an
emergency.Unless we hold stocks
to cover this, our customers are
faced with a potential delay of
several weeks." If the resin in an ion
exchange plant fails or is lost it, the
result is downtime for the customer
with loss of production until new
resin can be obtained – often
several weeks – and if the customer
is a power station the costs can be
dramatic.To solve the problem
ELGA has agreed with resin
suppliers to hold the largest UK
stock of ion exchange resins. More articles from ELGA Process Water: | 
