Missing Inventory
Symptoms (What do you see…)
- Can’t find/ship inventory.
- Failure to meet customer demands.
- Production interruption.
- Substituting higher cost items.
- Partial/late shipments.
- Expediting.
- Alternate parts being substituted.
- Customer penalties imposed.
- Rush orders.
Causes (What you’ve got…)
- Mis-marked, mis-located, or mis-appropriated inventory.
- Not cycle counting.
- Lack of controls and planning.
- Insufficient or inappropriate warehouse resources.
- Poor physical inventory controls.
- Lack of discipline.
Solutions (What might work…)
- Use cycle counting to find root causes of and fix inventory problems.
- Implement bar coding to get real-time transaction data.
- Review layout of warehouse and storage locations.
- Introduce systems (control/planning/transactions).
- Require compliance with procedures.
- Improve physical and system controls, including process for bringing inventory in and out.
More Inventory Topics
