Customer Stories
Real operations. Real problems. Specific outcomes.
We don't publish vanity metrics. Every case study below names the exact problem, explains why it was happening, and shows the specific dollar outcome.
Stockouts were costing them $340K a year. They thought it was a buying problem. It was a visibility problem.
The Situation
An 8-branch industrial distributor in the Mid-Atlantic had a persistent stockout problem on their top 200 SKUs. They'd tried adjusting PAR levels twice in the past year. Nothing stuck. Every month, their fastest movers ran dry in 3–4 branches while the same SKUs sat fully stocked in others.
The Real Problem
The real problem surfaced when we mapped their inventory data: $340K in annual revenue was being lost not to genuine stockouts, but to inter-branch blindness. Stock existed. Nobody knew where. Orders got declined, customers got frustrated, and expedite costs piled up.
Specific Pain Points
- —Branch managers were making replenishment decisions from 48-hour-old ERP data
- —No automated trigger to identify when a low-stock branch had a high-stock neighbor
- —Expedited freight costs averaging $28K/month on SKUs that existed elsewhere in the network
- —Customer fill rate at 81% — 11 points below their target
What We Did
We connected all 8 branch systems into a live unified inventory view, built dynamic inter-branch transfer logic based on real-time velocity and stock positions, and created automated reorder triggers that account for what's available network-wide before placing supplier orders.
Business Outcomes
$340K
annual revenue recovered from prevented stockouts
↓ 71%
reduction in inter-branch expedite freight costs
94%
customer fill rate — up from 81% in 90 days
23 days
time from connect to first prevented stockout
“We had the inventory. We just couldn't see it. Within the first month, we stopped declining orders we should have been able to fill.”
— VP of Operations, Mid-Atlantic Industrial Distributor
They were losing $47K a month in margin and calling it a pricing problem. It was a timing problem.
The Situation
A Cleveland-based industrial wholesaler had been watching gross margins compress for 6 consecutive quarters. They'd raised prices twice. Margins kept sliding. When we audited the root cause, the answer wasn't pricing strategy — it was a 3-week lag between supplier price changes and system updates.
The Real Problem
In any given month, their team was quoting and committing jobs based on costs that were already out of date. When invoices arrived, the gap was absorbed silently — by the margin. Nobody had visibility into which open quotes were priced on stale cost data.
Specific Pain Points
- —Supplier price changes manually updated by one pricing analyst — average 18-day lag
- —14 active open quotes at any time priced on outdated cost data
- —Invoice reconciliation taking 3 days/month and still missing discrepancies
- —No visibility into which SKU lines were margin-positive vs. margin-negative
What We Did
We built automated supplier price feed monitoring across 38 supplier portals and PO acknowledgements, created same-day price staging with analyst review workflow, and deployed a live margin dashboard showing real landed cost per SKU against current open quotes.
Business Outcomes
$47K/mo
margin leakage stopped in the first full month
Same day
supplier price changes reflected in the system — down from 18 days
↓ 89%
reduction in invoice-vs-PO discrepancies
2.1pts
gross margin improvement sustained over 6 months
“We thought we had a pricing problem for two years. It was a data timing problem. The fix was faster than I expected and the margin impact showed up in week three.”
— COO, Regional Industrial Wholesaler
Three line stoppages a month. Each one avoidable. Each one caused by the same thing: a shortage nobody saw coming.
The Situation
A mid-size OEM manufacturer producing custom hydraulic assemblies was experiencing 2–3 unplanned line stoppages every month. Each stoppage averaged 6 hours. At $4,200/hour in fully-loaded production cost, that was $63,000–$94,000 in monthly downtime — before factoring in expedite costs and late delivery penalties.
The Real Problem
Every stoppage traced back to the same root cause: a component shortage that was visible in the PO system days or weeks before it hit the floor, but never connected to the work orders waiting on that component. The information existed. The link didn't.
Specific Pain Points
- —MRP system generated POs but didn't dynamically link supplier delays to WIP impact
- —Average 4.3 days between a supplier slip and the production planner finding out
- —Labor scheduled and materials staged for jobs that couldn't run — wasted cost every week
- —8 customer delivery commitments missed in the 6 months before deployment
What We Did
We deployed cascade detection connecting supplier PO updates to open work order requirements in real time. When a component delivery slips, every affected work order is identified within the hour, delivery commitments are risk-flagged, and recommended actions (expedite, reschedule, substitute) are surfaced before anything reaches the floor.
Business Outcomes
Zero
unplanned line stoppages from component shortages in 90 days post-deployment
↓ 91%
reduction in expedite freight costs
47 min
average time from supplier delay to planner alert — down from 4.3 days
$84K
monthly downtime cost eliminated
“The first time Aztela flagged a supplier slip and we were able to act on it before the line stopped, my production manager said 'this is the first time we've been ahead of a shortage instead of chasing one.'”
— Plant Manager, Custom Hydraulic Equipment Manufacturer
What would your version of this look like?
30 minutes. We map your specific operational gaps, put a dollar figure on each, and show you exactly what fixing them looks like.
Get Your Free Operations Assessment →