npower Case Study

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npower is one of Britain’s leading energy companies, serving residential and business accounts with electricity and gas and is now part of the E.ON group.

Following the Government’s commitment to smart metering, we helped npower overcome a range of challenges and launch their demanding roll out plan.

Like many utilities, npower was set up from a legacy position of meter replacement activity. The smart revolution increased volumes by 1000%, and introduced never before seen complexities such as matching firmware to physical units; combining assets into sets and ensuring compliance of all the components; aligning customer account details with assets serial numbers to ensure the correct data is given to the correct customer.

Solution

npower’s challenges arise from a non-digital, limited reverse logistics and largely manual starting position. ByBox developed a solution that created a set of rules based on what
the item was, its SKU, who it belonged to, the condition and where it needed to go.

These rules were added to our Thinventory platform and in a few simple steps the operative could process the items and automatically produce an onward bound label to the relevant repairer, scrap or good stock.

By introducing the use of Blackstripe return labels and our Verify solution, npower gained a completely transparent end to end process.

Challenges

Reduced parts visibility

  • There was no way of knowing when items were coming back from the field
  • This led to a backlog of stock waiting to be processed

Inventory challenges

  • Inventory was sorted and managed in house
  • The process of getting faulty items through to repair was time consuming

Struggling to manage meter operative compliance

  • No data on whether meter operatives were sending back parts when they were required to.

Benefits

Increased parts visibility

  • Parts can be monitored and missing returns are identified
  • Slow and difficult internal processing was removed both in the warehouse and from asset planning
  • Through the integration with Thinventory, npower has visibility at all times

Improved inventory levels

  • The amount of inventory required was reduced
  • The number of days out of the supply chain were reduced, getting stock to repairer and back in a much shorter time

Boosted meter operative compliance

  • New data helped monitor meter operative stock and chase items that were missing
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