Different Strokes
Carl Tindell and Johan van Tilburg attend the same Baptist church just about every Sunday, and meet outside of the office for family gatherings, dinners, and University of Tennessee football games. Van Tilburg has been married to Carl’s daughter, Melanie, for 21 years.
But while Carl and Johan share a business and a family, they could not be further apart in personality. Carl is larger than life, engaging, reminiscent of a favorite uncle. He’s quick to end a sentence with a laugh, just as he did while explaining his huge, brown office desk, which dates back to the early 1970s. “It does the job,” he says.
While Carl doesn’t care for smoking, van Tilburg still puffs hand-rolled Drum brand cigarettes–which he gets from his mother Alwine, who’s in Belgium–particularly while playing steady winning hands of blackjack. Carl drives a sharp, white Ford SUV, goes to the Daytona 500 every year, and decades ago would punch his car to 100 mph on the country road outside Tindell’s offices. Van Tilburg pilots a black Volkswagen Touareg, the German car manufacturer’s version of an SUV. And unlike Carl, who grew up in Knoxville region, van Tilburg’s father Joop kept the family moving. Van Tilburg, 47, was born in the Netherlands but grew up in Turkey, eastern Africa, India, and South Africa before the family returned to Europe, and he eventually made his way to the United States.
Even as he was bringing in van Tilburg, Carl was working on other improvements to the way Tindell’s manages and delivers its goods. Eight years ago, the company purchased a six-acre portion of a former Georgia Pacific distribution facility in north Knoxville and transformed it into a commodity center. Along the lines of a wheel-and-spoke system, the central yard provides core deliveries while freeing up delivery vehicles from Tindell’s retail yards.
“It helps you reduce your inventory at our retail yards, and at any given day, we can have nine trucks in one market. We can send them where we need them,” explains Ed Mahaffey, vice president of operations.
A key to the commodity center is that it does not serve any walk-in traffic. Not having any customers on-site makes a big difference, van Tilburg notes. This is also where Tindell’s maintains its fleet of tractor-trailers; its six retail stores maintain its flatbeds. The flatbeds provide finish work and fill-in loads from retail locations.
The center ships roughly 90% of the company’s framing materials, and retail yards fill in with finishing materials as needed. A second shift works from 3 to 11 p.m., building loads in time for the day’s first deliveries, which roll out at 6:30 a.m. Tindell’s promises its deliveries on time within 48 hours of an order. “That’s our rule. The customer doesn’t even have to ask,” Mahaffey says. “We have a good reputation. We don’t have to be the cheapest because our customers know we’re dependable.”
Rail service provides the majority of fresh inventory, including forest products and roofing materials.
A key to the center’s efficiency and cost effectiveness is the use of a vendor-managed inventory system. Its agreements with multiple vendors let Tindell’s free up cash flow not invested in inventory while providing the dealer with a wider breath of inventory–primarily at no risk. Additionally, it lets Tindell’s save on vendor delivery charges and transportation costs.
Through an in-house inventory management system, Tindell’s shares information with its suppliers. “Vendors love the ease of getting information from us,” says Gene McKinney, a 32-year veteran of Tindell’s and its vice president of purchasing. Mc-Kinney explains that to make the system worthwhile, products that Tindell’s uses through the system are bulk products that the dealer is constantly delivering. Altogether, about 12 vendors work with Tindell’s through the portal, which has been expanded to include materials the dealer users at its truss facility as well as log products.
“Within the bounds of an agreed method of management, you can turn your suppliers into a partner,” McKinney says. “What you don’t want is mills turning your yard into a reload center for them.”
Customer service levels also have increased, since product is never out of stock and there is always more inventory on site than if Tindell’s had to pay for it in advance.
