Inventory Woes

[Dave1982]

Perhaps someone can shed some light on this for me, because I can't begin to fathom how this makes ANY sense.

We had inventory last night. I had to be there despite the fact that an outside crew was doing all the grunt work.

After they counted a section, they affixed a tag to the shelf with the total count for that section. This number wasn't broken down by SKU at all; it was just a total number of items in that section. ie "Q=558"

Partway into this, I come to find out that I am supposed to be going back through the sections they've finished and verify those counts. That is, just count up how many things are in that section, and see if my count agrees with theirs.

First of all, no one told me this. I'd been in the back room checking some count discrepancies in the backstocked furniture, and apparently the OpsMan held a little rally meeting while I was doing this, then didn't bother filling me in when I finished checking on the variances. And this was MY fault? What was I doing this whole time? Getting SKU checks for the inventory crew!

Idiot......

Now, this recount process - in addition to being a colossal pain in the ass - was absolutely pointless.

For one thing, when there are hundreds of items per section, there's really no way to know if my recount was off, or their initial count was off. And I'm sure as hell not counting the same section twice.

Second, since these recounts aren't broken down by SKU, they to little - if anything - to show where the error may be.

Third, we didn't even finish doing that job. At least half the store was not double counted when we called it quits. And now that they store has been reopened, there's no point in any further counts, since the second anything is bought, the counts WILL be off. If it was so important to do this, why didn't we stay to finish counting? And if it's not that critical, then why were we wasting our time.

Fourth, the inventory crew was NOT recounting sections where we found problems.

And last but not least, the system automatically highlights all noteworthy variances for a recount. So regardless of what each section count it, we're still gonna have to check the SKUs with discrepancies, and THAT is what will determine the final count for those items.

So......any one have any clue why we'd have to do that? I asked and was not given an answer beyond "it's important to get an accurate count" without any explanation as to how this helps.

[Salted Grump]

Because your bosses Don't know their asses from a hole in the ground and think that if they fill your head will bullshit you'll just smile, nod, and back away slowly so the place can go to pot and let the Regular Employees get blamed for it, while Management goes off to fuck up another place?

[Becks]

What, exactly, are they hoping to accomplish by conducting inventory in such a manner?

[Dave1982]

What, exactly, are they hoping to accomplish by conducting inventory in such a manner?

That's what I'd like to know. Only a small portion of the whole process made any sense.

[MsFabulous]

Our inventories run like this too, except that everyone knows that the sections will be counted twice, and we don't use outside people...
Last year they stayed til something like 2am and still didn't finish recounting.
Recounting finished 2 or 3 days later (business running as usual during those days of course...)
So I have NO idea how any of it is supposed to be useful either, but at least you know your bosses aren't the only idiots who think it works O.o

[Justiceguy216]

Busy work

Management at my store has been adding unnecessary tasks as well, I think corporate handed down a memo that employees need to be pointlessly overworked at all times so that we have no time to think and realize that we're being had. I was recently told that when there's nothing to do I am to "walk in circles"...meaning roam the department to make sure everyone's being helped, I really wish they'd make it sound a little more useful.

And as far as the recounts go, we've never done that at my staples, we just check variances which is the best verification technique available.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

At my store, when we do inventory, the crew counts everything in a certain section and then a store employee "test counts" that same section after they're done.

I don't think they have to re-count everything; just a few items in that section. If mistakes are found, the inventory crew has to count that entire section over again.

[Ellain]

Well, that seems pretty pointless to me. If it makes you feel better, you're not the only one dealing with screwy inventories. And you're lucky- yours only lasts a few hours.
In the pharmacy, we are getting a new manager. Because of this, we need to make sure our inventory and order quantities are correct. Because my coworkers are lazy or just too good to be bothered with trivial jobs like this, I personally get to count every damn pill in the pharmacy. I've been working on it for weeks, and am not even halfway done.
Ok, done venting for now!

[Geek King]

I'm going for the Occam's Razor explanation on this one: The Managers running inventory had no idea how to actually find where a discrepency came from, so they make you do the extra work until they realize that they still can't figure it out. In the end, they just called the whole thing off.

[Becks]

Only a small portion of the whole process made any sense.

Which part would that be?

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Oh yeah, I forgot to even mention reconciliation, which takes place after the entire store has been counted and re-counted.

That's when the inventory count on an item, as taken by the store employees and inventory crew, is significantly off from what the computer system says it should be, because computers don't make mistakes and so on.

If I get sent outside again this year to do reconciliation in lawn and garden, I'm going to commit sideways. Last year we had thousands on four-packs that were naturally off, since that's more likely to happen with large quantities anyhow, and after four of us attempted to recount everything four times, we were still hundreds off what we should have had.

And pallets of soil, bark, mulch, cow shit, etc are absolutely impossible to count exactly unless you take all the bags off the pallet and count them as you restack them. So we just ended up BSing that stuff.

But of course bonuses and a day without the suits bitching are riding on all this for the managers; hence the constant counting and re-counting of everything.

[sms001]

The only thing I can think of is that you are an honesty check on the inventory crew. Your management told them that an employee would double check their work so they'll make more of an effort to be accurate? Grasping at straws here.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

The only thing I can think of is that you are an honesty check on the inventory crew. Your management told them that an employee would double check their work so they'll make more of an effort to be accurate? Grasping at straws here.

That must not be the case at my store. One year we had a woman on the inventory crew who spent more time checking herself out in the mirrors in softlines than counting stuff.

[Dave1982]

Which part would that be?

The rechecking of SKUs with significant variances

[Jetfire]

I help out every year with the inventory at the building supplies store my dad works at. It's annoying because it is completely done by hand (no scanners) but at least it mostly makes sense overall.

The entire count is done by hand and written down on sheets of paper (SKU, Description, Primary Count, Primary Units, Secondary Count, Secondary Units), all counted by the employees (and others who have done inventory often enough to have shown they know what they're doing, like my mom and I) and usually recorded by students and others the employees have blackmailed into helping. Not counting precounting (that happens to the overheads and backstock thru the week before) we usually finish the store + yard in about 8 hours total, split between a Saturday evening and a Sunday morning.

Once the primary count of a section is done, a third person will go in and spot check the count, make sure it looks like everything was counted and that it was counted properly (rule of thumb is to spot check about 1/3 of the items).

Sheets are collected by noon on Sunday usually and we're free to go.

Then the fun part starts. :P (I started helping with this part in the past few years). The office workers, myself included, total up the primary and secondary counts on each sheet. This serves as a spot check for when we're entering the sheets in the system. Once the counts are totaled, we start entering line by line, the SKU and totals. If something isn't in the system (a number mis recorded, or no SKU at all) we highlight it for the managers/senior staff to track down in the store). If we get a clean sheet, the totals should match up, hence the sanity check the totalling provides. Usually if something is off, it's because you mis-added the totals, or something was really a secondary count but was recored as a primary. For our store it usually comes out to about 1500 sheets, entered in over a 2-3 day period. After that, I usually go back to my own programming job and it's up to the Office Manager and store managers to handle the rest of inventory.