With automation and innovation at its core, WireMasters is revolutionizing supply chains
As a trusted source for wire, cable, connectors, and harness management products, WireMasters offers a range of value-added services for the aerospace and defense industries. The company prides itself on being inventory-fueled and service-driven, and for more than 30 years, customers have turned to WireMasters for unrivaled quality, superior customer service, on-time delivery, and industry-leading services.
“Broadly speaking, we supply electrical wire, cable, and interconnect material to the aerospace market,” opens Drew Love, CEO. “I often tell folks that ‘anything that flies is a candidate for our materials.’ Our historical niche was in the mil-spec product space, but in recent years, we’ve expanded into commercial aerospace products as well as outer space applications for low Earth orbit.
“The applications for our material cover a broad range of industry sectors,” he adds. “Primarily, we are in the aerospace market, which can be further divided into
military aerospace, commercial aviation, private business jets, and outer space applications. There are also other use cases in down hole drilling, automative, and medical, but these are much smaller focuses for us at the moment.”
In terms of WireMasters’ portfolio, Ryan Barnhart, Senior Supply Chain Director, adds: “We like to say ‘everything in your harness is on our shelves’ to represent that we provide products other than wire. While we do stock more than 150 million feet of wire and cable globally, we provide a wide range of products and services including connectors and harness management products like heat shrink tubing, braid, expandable sleeving, cable identification products, molded shapes, and much more.”
Rooted in quality
Turning to the company’s history, Drew continues: “WireMasters was founded in 1988, with an ownership change in 2001, and we are still a privately held company to this day. With the change in ownership, WireMasters has grown exponentially, from a small team with a single location in Tennessee to a global organization with team members and locations all over the world, including the US, Mexico, Canada, the UK, Germany, and Turkey.
“We’ve always been what I’d consider ‘early adopters’ of technology, and it’s part of our DNA to be continuously improving our business processes and services. We have several ongoing automation projects from deploying an RPA system to tackle many repetitive tasks for data entry and ERP process completion to hiring a dedicated team of automation specialists to identify new applications.”
Having successfully launched its first e-commerce platform just two years ago, WireMasters has recently undergone a web re-platforming project to support future growth. “We’re aiming to provide a state-of-the-art e-commerce experience for our customers and partners,” Drew explains. “We really excel in the stocking and distribution of materials, and we want to broaden the scope of products we work with. By hosting a multi-seller platform, we can bridge the gap for smaller companies who cannot invest in a digital strategy while providing technical competence and expertise to our customers.”
WireMasters has also implemented an industry-leading vendor managed inventory program to allow the business to stock products on a customer’s site. Drew elaborates: “Our new proprietary platform and RFID solution enables ‘walk out’ consumption, meaning we own the inventory on our customers’ shelves, but allow them the convenience of ‘grab and go,’ allowing operators to leave the site without scanning materials. The system comes with an online portal to provide customers with access to an entire suite of analytics about their operations; they can search for inventory, see paperwork and documentation, and review pipeline or forecasting reports to help manage stock levels.”
Drew adds: “We’re also exploring warehouse robot pickers that can integrate with our ERP system for automated retrieval of inventory items during our pick, pack, and ship process. It’s in the early stages of development, but we expect to have some facets of an automated operation via robotic automated pickers by 2026.”
“Technology is rapidly changing – so fast that we’re being very deliberate about our approach,” Drew states. “We want to utilize the latest and greatest technologies while remaining flexible enough to adapt if a newer product or software comes along; we want to be cutting edge, but not bleeding edge. As we continue to automate, we’re finding innovative ways for our employees to bring added value, and I’m excited about the opportunity to have our people focusing on customer service to provide a best-in-class service, or what I call the ‘white glove’ service strategy.
“2025 is going to be a strong year, and it should be the year that we transition from human data entry to much more automated data entry,” Drew reflects as our conversation ends. “We’ve already made investments in the headcount and infrastructure we need to enable our growth into a significantly larger organization. 2025 will be a year to execute and deliver on the investments we’ve made over the last couple of years, and we hope it will be a year to reflect on as a key milestone in the company’s history.
“Internally, we discuss our path to reaching one billion, and I see us well on the way to this milestone over the next five years. I envision the utility of a more automated warehouse system, using managed agents as part of our SAAS solution. Our industry is likely to generally be a slow adopter when it comes to AI platforms, as many of our customers are government contractors. We’re already seeing FARS requirements and self-certification requests that our customers’ data doesn’t interact with any AI solutions, so we must be intelligent about how we implement technology to not overstep any limitations placed on us.
“As we perfect our systems and technologies, we will likely reach a place where we’ll become more acquisitive in nature,” he shares. “We’ll be looking for other complementary businesses as acquisition targets, as there is immediate value to be gained by bringing technologies together. Ideally, we can target companies that add to our supplier and line card expansion initiatives, as this will be crucial in growing to one billion and beyond.
“Overall,” Drew concludes, “our mission is to help companies struggling with the management of their supply chain for electrical component raw materials by providing inventory, data analytics, and human capital. This allows customers to enjoy reduced lead times, avoid production delays, and lower the number of suppliers they manage, enabling them to focus on their core business.”