Store Inventory Accuracy and Deming’s 14 Points

Our system of make-and-inspect, which if applied to making toast would be expressed: “You burn, I'll scrape.” – W. Edwards Deming (1900-1993)

What would Dr. Deming make of store accuracy?

Impossible to know for a couple of reasons. First, he died nearly thirty years ago. Second, the bulk of his career was devoted to the attainment of total quality management in manufacturing. That said, the spirit of his famous 14 Points for Management first published in his 1982 book Out of the Crisis applies to – well, pretty much every facet of every business and store is no exception.

Point 1: Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and to stay in business, and to provide jobs.

“Defects are not free. Somebody makes them, and gets paid for making them.”


If there's one thing that the COVID-19 pandemic has taught retailers, it's that when your system on hand records don't match the physical stock in the store, it's a real problem for customer service and productivity. When your sales primarily come from walk-in business, there's really no reliable way of knowing how many customers walked out unsatisfied or made a substitution as a result of an empty shelf.

When you assign online pickup orders to be picked at a store because the system on hand balance shows stock, the curtain is unceremoniously ripped away. How many orders couldn't be fulfilled because the available stock in the system couldn't be found in the store? How much wasted time was spent fruitlessly trying to find the stock to pick the orders? 

Retailers don't measure their inventory accuracy. They must.

Retailers don't adequately research the and transactional errors that cause their inventory to become inaccurate in the first place. They must. 

Before any of that can happen, management needs to actually care about inventory accuracy.

Point 2: Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. Western management must awaken to the challenge, must learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership for .

“To manage one must lead. To lead, one must understand the work that he and his people are responsible for.”

Inaccurate stock records don't “just happen”. They are the result of one of two things:

  1. People aren't following the correct processes for managing stock
  2. People are correctly following flawed processes for managing stock

In either case, the responsibility falls on management to correct these issues. This can't be accomplished without diving deep to understand the processes and behaviours that are causing errors.

Point 3: Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place.

“Inspection does not improve the quality, nor guarantee quality. Inspection is too late. The quality, good or bad, is already in the product.”

This is one that retailers generally don't understand. At all. Most “inventory accuracy” programs focus on trying to optimize counting frequency. Items with historically poor inventory accuracy are cycle counted and corrected more frequently than items with fewer historical errors, with little investigation as to why those errors are happening in the first place. This approach is really “problem solving theatre” – there are process issues that are causing the errors and constantly repairing the output without addressing the root causes of why the records became inaccurate in the first place will never lead to sustained inventory accuracy.

Point 4: End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, minimize total cost. Move toward a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.

“The result of long-term relationships is better and better quality, and lower and lower costs.”

Are you buying products from suppliers that make it more difficult to keep stock accurate in stores? Do they wrap several different items in nearly identical packaging to save money at the expense of confusing store staff and customers? Are the barcodes applied with easily removeable (and switchable) stickers? Are the barcodes easy to find and scan at the checkout?

This is often small potatoes when compared to the in store process and behavioural issues, but every little bit helps. Missed sales caused by inaccurate stock affects the supplier too, so to the extent that they can work with retailers to avoid being part of the problem, everyone will benefit.

Point 5: Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.

“Putting out fires is not improvement of the process. Neither is discovery and removal of a special cause detected by a point out of control. This only puts the process back to where it should have been in the first place.”

Focusing on inaccurate stock records is trying to manage the output. Inaccurate inventory is caused by processes that result in inaccurate transactions which in turn result in inaccurate on hand balances.

If you research a variance and determine it was because Mary made a mistake at the checkout, what you've found is an explanation for that particular error, not a root cause.

Why did Mary make that mistake? Was it a specific one-off event that won't likely ever be repeated? Has she been properly trained on proper checkout procedures? Are the checkout procedures themselves flawed? Has management instructed Mary to focus on speed over accuracy? Are other cashiers making similar mistakes for the same reasons?

Point 6: Institute training on the job.

“People don't like to make mistakes.”

The retail industry in general is notorious for high turnover in front line staff – you know, the people who actually transact stock movements within the store. As a result, it can be tempting to skimp on training new people for fear that your investment won't be returned. When new people have questions, they need to go to a manager for instruction on what to do. More often than not, busy managers will provide shortcut solutions that are designed to get the problem off their plates as quickly as possible.

Is saving money on training actually saving money?

Point 7: Institute leadership. The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets to do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of overhaul, as well as supervision of production workers.

“It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and then do your best.”

Training is a good start, but it's not enough to sustain inventory accuracy. Do people understand why inventory accuracy is important to customers and fellow team members and how their role can impact it?

Point 8: Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.

“Where there is fear, you do not get honest figures.”

Poor inventory accuracy should not be seen as a reflection of people's performance, rather the performance of the process. If inventory discrepancies discovered in cycle counts result in witch hunts that are used to find culprits and lay blame, people will quickly learn “the right amount” of error they can report to avoid suspicion on the low end and recriminations on the high end. The true problems will remain buried under rosy reports that everyone can reference to argue that a problem doesn't exist.

Point 9: Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team, to foresee problems of production and in use that may be encountered with the product or service.

“Quality is everyone's responsibility.”

Contributors to inaccurate inventory records can be found anywhere and processes (both internal and external to the store) can be the cause. Is an inventory accuracy lens being used when designing new processes and procedures in Loss Prevention, Merchandising, Sourcing, DC Picking, Store Receiving and Stock Management?

Point 10: Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.

“Hopes without a method to achieve them will remain mere hopes.”

There may well be some store employees who are deliberately trying to sabotage the business, but they are in a very small minority. Telling people “We need you to keep your stock more accurate” without first investing in education, training and the proper tools is like giving them a mule and telling them to go out and win the Kentucky Derby. 

Point 11: 11a. Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership. 11b. Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals. Substitute leadership.

“Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.”

Don't let this one fool you. Deming was all about data collection and measurement of results. It's what you do with the data that counts. Stock variance reports can alert management to where the problems may lie, but the only path to a solution is to dig in and understand the process in detail. Once a process change is made that you feel should have solved the problem, future rounds of data collection will tell you whether or not you were successful. If you weren't successful, you need to dig in again, because there is something you missed.

Point 12: 12a. Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right to pride of workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality. 12b. Remove barriers that rob people in management and in engineering of their right to pride of workmanship. This means, inter alia, abolishment of the annual or merit rating and of management by objective.

“When one understands who depends on me, then I may take joy in my work.”

See Points 6 and 7 above. The impact to customers and fellow team members of doing things that cause stock to become inaccurate is easy to explain. People want to do a good job, but they need to be given the right education, training and tools.

13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.

“Learning is not complusary. Neither is survival.”

When it comes to store inventory accuracy, there's never a point at which you are finished. There will always be new causes of errors and processes that need improving.

14. Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody's job.

“Long-term commitment to new learning and new philosophy is required of any management that seeks transformation. The timid and the fainthearted, and people that expect quick results, are doomed to disappointment.”

Store perpetual inventory has been around for decades. So have the process gaps, bad habits and lack of care that makes inventory records inaccurate. There are a lot of people involved and a lot of moving parts that will make it difficult to attain and sustain high levels of inventory accuracy at stores. It will take effort. It will cost some money. It won't be easy.

But living with the impacts of poor on hand accuracy is no walk in the park either. It's taking MORE effort, costing MORE money and making things MORE difficult on a daily basis. 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *