Whipping Your Ordering Process into Shape

warehouse manager using a tablet to manage his distribution center

Do you have too much of this and not enough of that?

Are you constantly moving items onto backorders?

It is a surprise when you find that items that should move are gathering dust?

An inefficient ordering system is a company’s worst enemy. It’s like hiring a thief and keeping them on even after they’ve been caught red-handed. Whipping a broken ordering process back into shape can take time, there’s no magic wand to wave and fix it, but there are concrete steps to getting the operation back on track. First, everyone in the organization needs to understand the principles of Inventory Management 101. This knowledge is for everyone in the chain from the sales office to shipping and receiving. Logistics is the science of moving items from place to place in the supply chain and makes any business that carries inventory for sale or internal use a supply chain business whether B2B, B2C, production, or manufacturing.

What is a KPI?

A KPI is a Key Performance Indicator, a metric that tells management how the business is performing. Taken separately, these are vital numbers to know, but they are not stand alone statistics. There is a flow to KPI, where one statistic – let’s call it the percentage of order fill from a vendor – has an impact on every other KPI from the second it lands on the receiving dock. Taking these numbers from pieces of paper into real-time data takes an inventory management system, and barcoding capability, with items scanned in, put away, ordered or requisitioned, picked, and then scanned out again. These numbers tell an organization where they stand, and help to set goals for all departments such as sales, marketing, and warehouse management. More importantly, they offer practical, practicable, and qualitative information about the company’s health.

Measurement = Management

Understanding ordering cycles is impossible without data, and only time can give a company that kind of data. Until management can establish a full year’s data, going off previous cycles is going to be guesswork at best. Yes, there is always going to be a risk that the warehouse could get stuck with a disastrous buying decision, but risk can be reduced when numbers are deployed to show a need for a product and that it is likely to sell. Once the real-time inventory is in place, it’s easier to set an automatic reorder threshold, and to see what items need to be placed on clearance or even removed from stock and – it’s harsh – scrapped.

Finishing Touches

As a finishing touch to any warehouse management system, Voodoo Robotics offers a unique take on pick to light (PTL). Voodoo Robotics uses Cloud Display Devices as a next-generation pick-to-light system. The devices are wireless, run on two AAA batteries, and can be affixed to shelves, bins, racks, pallet jacks, pick carts, and anywhere else that five lines of information would speed things along.

Improve that baseline KPI with as few as ten devices, a Turbo wireless connector, and something as simple as Microsoft Excel or as complex as your WMS. Find out what Voodoo can do to make your organization a lean, mean KPI machine.