VENDOR BUY-INHerbstreit says it took Drees several years to get its builders to understand why feeding DreesBuild with daily updates was important. The tide turned, says Colyer, in 2002, when the company opened a second portal, called DreesTeam, through which trade partners could access scheduling information for free. “Once the vendors started monitoring the system, the builders realized they had to be more current and accurate,” notes Colyer. Drees created positions for a production resource manager for each division. Managers are responsible for training vendors on the system, solving problems, and acting as liaison with the company's information systems department.
Through December 2006, 826 of 1,461 vendors were using DreesTeam, which gets about 15,000 hits per month. “It has reduced steps with our in-house scheduling communication by giving our manufacturing units and installation services the same ability to access the same timely information available to our sales team,” says Dave Sharp, executive account manager for Builders First-Source's Ohio Valley Group in Cincinnati. Builders FirstSource was Drees' initial supplier to go “phoneless” on scheduling deliveries, which Sharp says required a leap of faith in the system among Drees' builders, especially after some initial snafus. Debbie Franxman, sales consultant for Wiseway Supply, a Florence, Ky.–based lighting supplier, adds that DreesTeam allows her company to see a job's entire construction schedule online, as well as forecasts about future starts, “which lets us control our inventory. I wish other builders would schedule this way.”
Because Drees provides vendors up to 60 days' notice about possible changes to its production schedule, suppliers have been more willing to lock in prices for materials and labor, says John Heeter, who manages production for Drees' Premier Homes division. Suppliers can also track their own service performances, for better or worse: A “duration” report shows that Drees' best electrical subcontractor last year was Dayton, Ohio–based Dillard Electric, which completed 97 percent of 68 roughs on schedule. It took Dillard 1.47 days, on average, to complete its stage of a house. (Typically, Drees schedules three days for rough electrical.) By comparison, some electrical subs' on-time completion rates fell below 60 percent.
Drees is using this data to determine its preferred vendors. David Drees, the company's CEO, says that this year his company will conduct an evaluation of its suppliers with an eye toward thinning the herd in anticipation of introducing value engineering to its construction process. Its ability to evaluate vendors, though, currently lacks a post-sale customer satisfaction component. So Drees is developing new contract-writing software, called Dream-Builder, which includes data about quality inspections and warranties that will be accessible on its existing portals. DreamBuilder should be ready later this year.
OPEN LINESThe Drees Co. has been tweaking its production scheduling systems for six years and has learned a thing or two about getting trade partners and employees on board:
- MAKE IT SIMPLE. Brian Clark, Drees' manager of data management, says that vendors willingly tap into portals that communicate scheduling information because access is free and painless. He attributes the success of a new electronic order-variance program to the fact that “we built in the capability for [vendors] to request FPOs in the first place.”
- INVOLVE EMPLOYEES. Teams of site superintendents and contractor managers devised the templates for a portal that the company's builders now update daily with data about their projects. Along the way, Drees relieved its sellers of certain job functions that are now handled by associates who are touch points for buyers, builders, and suppliers.
- MEASURE RESULTS. Before it developed its current scheduling system, “we had 185 builders scheduling houses 185 different ways,” says Jack Herbstreit, Drees' vice president of production. By tracking its projects consistently, Drees created an objective tool to analyze its own productivity and that of its associates and trades.