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Places

Improvements also must deal with the places. Can we find the stuff? How well are our parts marked and identified? Are location markings clear and understood by all the people? Do we need a locked stockroom? Some believe that they can achieve a secure stockroom only with locks and chain link fences. Today many companies decrease costs, confusion and increase productivity by doing away with the locks on the stockroom. This can be accomplished by motivat­ing a high level of professionalism. We must work to create an atmosphere where trust and security are achieved because people understand the importance of teamwork.

We must also look at the flow of the product. It is extremely important that each of us has a commitment to deliver the proper item to our customer. Of course the customer can be the ultimate company customer or simply the next person in line who receives the output of our efforts. This is known as the internal customer concept.

We need to develop a "burn deep down in our gut" that the item we touch, the transaction we process, and what the customer needs are in fact all the same thing. I like to emphasize that the people working with inventory have a personal commitment that all three of these things match.
Another aspect of this concept of place is the supply pipeline. We all are a part of this pipeline that links us ultimately to the customer. Are we a customer or a supplier? Of course the answer is both.

Distribution companies are also subject to the same pres­sures of a manufacturing firm. We must all shorten our cycles to meet customer needs.

Things

Do our people have the proper tools to help carry out the job. I find in many companies that people often work without the simplest of tools: rulers, gauges, visual aids, etc.; all to help identify items. Let's get the people together to discuss common problems and suggested solutions. Then work hard to implement these solutions. This helps to empower the people and achieve a high level of teamwork.

The best place to start is by concentrating on the flow of the product. Review how we receive, move, store, pick, pack and deliver the parts to our customer. We have discovered several tricks, traps and gotchas.

The main emphasis is that we must match the part number, description and quantity to what the customer needs. First of all look at the ways we have of marking and identifying the parts. Part number and description infor­mation has to be very clear. Some companies use brightly colored labels, big enough to see, showing part number, description, and quantity information.

We can put tags on the product at receipt, include the location when storing, and make the tags big and bright so anyone can see them easily. One company uses large florescent colored tags. They also change the color each month to tie the concept of time to their inventory.

The traps in inventory have to do with transaction accu­racy. People must feel that they can achieve accurate transactions. This is a training and educational issue that most companies address.

We need to also cite examples in our company where we are very accurate. What makes us so? Is it cost, dangerous goods, a high expectation or culture that expects accuracy? My suggestion is to find an example of high accuracy and communicate it to everyone. Hospital inventory control is a good example of this need.

Another one of the traps is date. We want to motivate everyone in the organization to focus on shipping the product to the customer on time. Colored flags, orderpapers and other visual methods are the best methods that I know.

But the real gotcha is the unit of measure. We have to be very careful that the quantity required and the quantity we supply have the right unit of measure conversion. I am sure that if we walked through the stockroom we could find examples of confusion among the people on some items. My suggestion is to print off your units of measure from the computer system. Print only those items that are not called "each." Another way is to sort by commodity code and see if some of the same types of items have different units of measure.

Conclusion

Effective inventory control encompasses all of these con­cepts. One gauge I use to tell how well a stockroom does in this area is housekeeping. Try this yourself—go out in the stockroom and plant a piece of paper on the floor and see how long it takes before it is picked up.

What kind of attitude do our people have towards the neatness of our stockroom? One manager said, "So goes our housekeeping, so goes our bin location integrity, so goes our transaction integrity." Housekeeping is one way to gauge if our attitude is directed at a professionally run stockroom.
By the way, I usually attach a five dollar bill to that piece of paper out in the stockroom. If we put it down on the floor with the five dollar bill facing up — how long would it lie there?

So what do we do now? There is an old saying that is appropriate. "If it is to be ... it is up to me." Each of us should have some plan in place to make continuous im­provements in our process.

We should strive to create a pocket of excellence around us. Pick up improvement ideas from everywhere we go, every­thing we see and everything we read. Pick an idea or two presented here; adapt and use it in your operation.

One company experienced several benefits from this type of devotion to the people working in inventory control. They noticed significant improvement in the people's attitude. There was a "heightened awareness" that we are all work­ing on the same team. All this translated into an improved attention to detail. The manager concluded that the people now accepted ownership of the improvement process.

Make a commitment to do something with these improve­ment ideas. Set up a program to train, educate, and motivate the people. Then you will be on that road called continuous improvement.