Their chemical romance

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By engaging both internal and external stakeholders as value creators, Rinchem Company, Inc. is redefining the concept of responsiveness

Companies in a variety of industries, including semiconductor and electronics, biotech and pharma, chemical manufacturing and distribution, aerospace, and others, require highly specific SCM services to manage the movement of chemicals used in their manufacturing processes. As a leading global provider of supply chain management (SCM) solutions for companies that need chemical management services, Rinchem Company, Inc. is redefining what it means to be a logistics specialist.

With a mission to be “the most responsive provider of chemical management services that any of our stakeholders ever experience,” the Albuquerque firm is in constant motion, taking decisive forward leaps toward that goal. Operating 30 distribution centers in nine countries, Rinchem’s services include warehousing, international freight forwarding, over-the-road transportation, temperature-controlled trucking, and last-mile trucking.

In August, Rinchem announced a partnership with one of the largest semiconductor manufacturers in the world. When the world's largest semiconductor companies expand and invest, they consider a number of potential options to support their operations: One, they can perform the functions themselves and invest in the infrastructure, regulatory expertise, and training required to support a fabrication operation. Two, they can push the responsibility to their suppliers, resulting in chemical manufacturers having to make the necessary investments themselves. Both approaches are exceptionally costly, and a cost that will eventually trickle down to the end-users.

Rinchem’s “many-to-one” model enables semiconductor fabricators to use their services as a funnel to support their  factory operations. “It's our core competence, so we are constantly investing and reinvesting in the infrastructure and expertise required to serve our customers — and they can focus on being the world's largest chip manufacturer,” said Chris Wright, Rinchem’s Executive Vice President and COO.

In addition to delivering greater cost benefits than their customers would reap by doing the work themselves, the model demands that Rinchem stay on the leading edge of productivity, which will serve them well as modern technology evolves.

The company is currently expanding its presence in South Korea, doubling the size of their existing facility footprint to accommodate the demands of the country’s burgeoning semiconductor manufacturing industry. “It’s a perfect fit for our expertise,” Wright said. “Our facilities are specifically designed for the safe storage and handling of microelectronic chemicals, and our recent expansion provides the capability required for the forecasted growth in that market, which is immense.”

Supply chains for chemical management companies must be stringently transparent for a host of reasons and offering end-to-end visibility in the supply line is another distinct advantage Rinchem offers. Their “glass pipeline” concept is designed to rapidly replace inventory in a fully visible supply chain, increasing its reliability and predictability, and reducing the need for keeping large quantities of buffer stock on hand. “This reduces carrying costs for our partners and serves as an added economic benefit of using Rinchem’s services,” he said.

The Chem-Star® cloud-based inventory management platform allows Rinchem customers to process orders, run customized inventory management reports, process special requests, and check if there are going to be inventory movements across the Rinchem global network. The evolving platform is the result of ongoing, dynamic collaborations with their customers.

“Our internal product team works closely with our customers to develop platform features that are meaningful to them,” Wright said. “Sometimes we'll do continuous improvement projects events or Kaizen events and include our customers, who share their ideas and visions, so we're constantly developing it.”

At the beginning of 2020, Wright developed the OneRinchem global standardization model. “We are more valuable to our customers if they can expect the same level of service and expertise at all of our global locations,” he said. “Twenty years ago, when I joined Rinchem, we had a model that promoted the concept that each manager of a service center was in essence the president of that business, and they acted locally to serve customer needs and grow the business. For that part of the company's history, it served us well, but as we've grown we’ve focused on scale and process maturity adherence to ensure quality in all of our transactions.”

OneRinchem mandates that all the company’s service centers meet stringent safety, accuracy, and productivity criteria; the executive team is currently auditing and certifying that each service center in their global network meets or exceeds the OneRinchem baseline. Said Wright, “It’s something that we are very passionate about, and it will help the company scale.”

The company’s impeccable safety record — a total case incident rate that’s less than the industry average — is a tremendous advantage within their specialty. “We have plans to cut it in half again and that is going to be through rewarding the right behavior and focusing on a safe environment,” said Wright.

With industry analysts predicting the largest build out of computing infrastructure in human history on the horizon, Rinchem is investing a great deal of energy and time in preparing for that future.

“Rinchem is focused on the development of our people and processes, and we’re also in a continuous dialogue with our customers to understand their needs and make sure we're ready to serve them,” Wright noted. “Much of what we're doing is just making sure we're poised for what is about to come because the industry is going to receive significant investments.”