Baby It's Cold Out There

It was cold today. I know, because I was in our lower warehouse most of the morning counting inventory. I was dressed warmly and prepared to get dirty and still, my hands were cold.

We stock a couple of hundred furniture items, so the count is much less time consuming (we count 6500 items in office products and IT) than in the big warehouse. The items are bigger and heavier to move if we need to and the sku #’s themselves are very very long and confusing. In a 20 digit item number there may be only 2 or 4 digits (right in the middle) that differentiate two items!

As in any inventory count, we found items we did not know we had and could not locate items we thought we had. Our perpetual inventory system is supposed to tell us what we have in stock at any time. When you cannot count on that, you need to do a full inventory count.

The number of transactions in a day is small in furniture compared to office products and each stick of furniture should have a place where it lives in the warehouse. Some places are temporary, like “dock” and “floor” and are only used when an item comes in or just before it goes out. This is not a “home” for the item, more like a cheap motel, a place to rest for the afternoon.

All the transactions affect inventory in some way. A filing cabinet that comes in is put on the floor and then it is received and put away in a bin. When it is sold, it comes out of the bin. If we get a damaged one back, we need to give it a different item number (or it will be sold as new) and assign it to a different bin. Damaged filing cabinets cannot have the same home as new ones, it‘s too confusing.

If an item outgrows its home (say we buy more because we expect an increase in demand) then we need to either find a bigger bin or have two homes for that item. We move them physically and we must also be sure that the perpetual inventory record is updated, that is, we know in the system what the new bin (i.e. the new address of the home) is.

There are processes in place and paper work and systems so that inventory is accurate. With training (including holiday and sick coverage) and the proper staff skills, inventory will be accurate.

Again, it’s all about the people.