Stock Take Week

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This week is stock take week and I know I will be busy as this is a manual process and for some unknown reason people tend to struggle to count correctly. I already know what is going to happen and that is I will be counting stock that has errors and I am sure that will basically mean I will be doing 80% of this on Thursday.

In the past I would just chase everyone away as you cannot count correctly when a warehouse is live meaning the stock is being pulled whilst you are counting. Shutting it down for a few hours is the only way and I could finish the entire stock take within a morning.

Why have they penciled in 3 days for the stock take and flown people in to assist is beyond me and shows how clueless they are. I am not going to intervene until I am required mainly as I struggle to work with other people who do not think logically and I chase them away and do it myself.

Years ago when I had a bicycle assembly plant we would have 20 000 bicycles and all the parts that go towards a bicycle and you learn quickly that you need to do the count yourself. Over 5 year period we never had shortages or overages which is just as bad as stock should not have babies. I used to send my entire crew out for an extended lunch and complete this task on my own. My foreman used to do this task with a team and once I saw the counts being way out and not even close after hours of work you have no choice, but to step in.

You have to understand that many of your workers are not educated like you think they might be and just because they can read and write it does not mean they can count. As scary as this may sound this is very true and why you need to know the caliber of staff you have and work with their strengths and fill in for their weaknesses.

Most warehouses use technology with scanners and barcodes so stock takes are very simple yet here we are with old school methods using pens and stock sheets which are then captured. A warehouse will work on a 5% shortfall which when you considering the stock value this is a big number and we work on 0% and need to be spot on. The 5% is down to theft and errors which we do not have that problem with everyone of the staff being hand picked with people we know and trust. You can imagine the likes of Amazon having a 5% loss built into their costs as this is a big problem. Amazon's turnover revenue for 2024 was $640 billion so you can see even if it was 3% stock losses that is still around $20 billion.

I knew a warehouse manager working for Walmart who was paid a salary according to the losses and he was very much hands on as even 1% saved over the course of a year made him very wealthy. If a company is prepared to write off 5% and you can bring it under 3 % or 2% you can understand how much money is involved. This is not how we operate and will do everything possible to maintain a 0% loss as that is our job and what we are paid to do.

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