RaceSource Inc., part of the race team for monster trucks Grave Digger and El Toro Loco, is also a custom manufacturer of vehicle components for the racing industry. While Grave Digger and El Toro Loco are well known within the monster truck racing industry, RaceSource has also gained notoriety for its high quality vehicle parts and components. The family-owned business designs and produces nearly 100 different specialty parts such as shock absorbers, spindles, and wheels.

As RaceSource grew, the volume of inventory quickly became too much to manage with a simple Excel spreadsheet.  Furthermore, Excel isn’t able to track assemblies – multiple items that can be used separately but when brought together, make up one item/asset. Between Excel’s inability to track assemblies and the sheer quantity of inventory, Paul Huffaker, vice president of RaceSource, began to research other options to track inventory.

“Maintaining an accurate inventory count on Excel was time consuming and error ridden,” said Huffaker. “Often I would reorder or manufacture parts I already had simply because I didn’t know I had them, which was an unnecessary cost. And with many smaller items being combined into an assembly, I needed a system that could use the existing UPC codes to track the individual item as well as the assembly.”

Huffaker evaluated several possible solutions before ultimately choosing Wasp Barcode Technologies’ Inventory Control v6 (ICv6). ICv6 was selected because it provided a barcoded tracking system that could effectively manage assemblies and work with existing UPC codes.

“ICv6 offered everything I needed – barcode scanning, assembly tracking. The system was extremely easy to use and the support from Wasp was incomparable when questions arose,” said Huffaker. “The selling point for me was the downloadable free trial that lets you test drive the system and see how it works specifically for your company. This provided me with the opportunity to learn the system before I made the purchase and see what I liked about it.”

Implemented in January 2012, Wasp’s products have enabled RaceSource to clearly label all inventory. Many of the parts manufactured were previously identified by their product name. With ICv6, Huffaker was able to create a numerical system that would identify every item individually along with an accompanying barcode. This helped not only with organization but has also improved the billing, manufacturing and reordering processes. RaceSource used to spend at least an hour a week simply tracking parts. They have also saved approximately $8,000 annually that used to be spent reordering unnecessary parts.

“We saw results from implementing Wasp’s ICv6 on the first day of use,” said Huffaker. “Wasp has been professional, well documented, and provided great customer support. My overall experience has been outstanding. I highly recommend Wasp’s solutions to anyone that is responsible for inventory control – regardless of technical experience – because it is so intuitive.”