WARRENVILLE, Ill. — Navistar says it will optimize its dealers’ parts inventory and speed up customer repairs through parts supply chain and intelligence tools provided by OEConnection LLC, the leading online parts and service exchange in the automotive industry.

Beginning this month, Navistar will implement OEConnection’s solutions for more than 280 International dealerships across 800 locations in the United States and Canada.

Accessing OEConnection’s online parts sourcing and idle inventory reduction tools, Navistar will create a parts supply network and shorten part cycle-times. Dealers can view each others’ stock in real time and pull from other dealers’ stock to fulfill customer needs. Reducing backorders will help speed up customer repairs. These tools will also enable Navistar to limit in-channel idle inventory and provide boosted fill rates even as capital investment in PDC (parts distribution centers) parts inventories are constrained, the company says.

"Accessing and using the parts our dealers have on hand benefits everyone in our dealer network," said Rommel Miranda, vice president, sales and marketing, Navistar Parts. "OEConnection’s comprehensive tools will help reduce the time it takes us to fulfill backordered parts requests and increase vehicle uptime for our customers."

Navistar is the first non-automotive manufacturer to select OEConnection to supply software solutions to its organization. It joins 14 automotive manufacturers and more than 15,000 dealerships throughout North America that are already utilizing its web-based tools.