Sh*t In Sh*t Out: Some Home Truths From Our Operations Director

It’s all about a good start.

Over many years of my professional career working in warehousing and logistics operations, a common issue I have witnessed time and again is that of stock integrity, constantly begging the question; “How can we stop stock from bending out of shape?”

Once the stock is under your roof, there are obvious proactive routines you can carry out to maintain integrity, such as “smart counting” and “repetitive low inventory checks”. We will cover these in a later blog, but for now we want to ensure stock is correct upon receipt because this will make life far easier, long term. Chasing that elusive white medium t-shirt (the one that’s holding a customer’s order up) when we have thousands of the black in stock, highlights the importance of accurate receipting.

So, is it realistic to have 100% units received every time on every delivery across the wide spectrum of goods being moved around our planet? Probably not. And it will always be product and resource dependent.

Imagine, for example, you receive 500 branded electronic products and 500 unbranded water bottles. Even though they are both 500 stock items, the appeal and value of the higher priced, branded product will naturally draw your resource, potentially leaving the unbranded item exposed to incorrect receipting.

A strong Warehouse Management System (WMS) can help with accurate inbounding, allowing you to see in real time your “expected” versus “received”. However, a WMS is not always necessary; you can manually control your information flow from an inbound (on paper) whilst still adhering to your set procedures, even if you do not have a WMS in place – this is how I processed inbounds in the mid 80s, and it served me well.

In my experience of inbounding deliveries of all shapes and sizes, almost all have a number of pressurised time constraints attached to them which, if allowed, can cause your process flow to breakdown or fail. These include:

· We are out of stock, so rush it through.

· We are missing sales. Can it be completed before 2pm?

· We have outstanding orders in the system and you have the stock.

· We are behind on our budgeted sales, so we need it out today.

· Can you put part of it away so we can pick it?

I have found the above pressures to be commonplace throughout warehousing and appreciate that buying teams have their jobs to do, which will be measured on sales. The operations team also have a job to do and theirs will be measured on accuracy, efficiency and cost. I would suggest no fudging things, and no rushing stock through at the expense of a process breakdown. I have seen it collapse many, many times in the past, so stay committed to your procedures and look at setting up some holding areas such as a quarantine location, holding bins and a returns location.

Whether it’s 150 units or 6 units that you have a problem with, do not allow it to be placed into pickable/allocated locations as this will become difficult to rectify and by then the infection will already have started. Process the good stock with management permission and control the rest physically and systematically.

I will leave this blog today with this thought: Often stock issues only come to light when the stock is depleting, but the problem has been active since inbound many months before.

So start as you mean to go on!

All the best,
Tony