A man who has committed a mistake and doesn’t correct it, is committing another mistake. – Confucius (551BC – 479BC)
A couple months ago, I wrote a piece entitled What Everybody Gets Wrong About Store Inventory Accuracy. Here it is in a nutshell:
- Retailers are pretty terrible at keeping their store inventory accurate
- It’s costing them a lot in terms of sales, customer service and yes, shrink
- The problem is pervasive and has not been properly addressed due to some combination of willful blindness, misunderstanding and fear
I think what mostly gives rise to the inaction is the assumption that the only way to keep inventory accurate is to expend vast amounts of time and energy on counting.
Teaching people how to bandage cuts, use eyewash stations or mend broken bones is not a workplace health and safety program. Yes, those things would certainly be part of the program, but the focus should be far more heavily weighted to prevention, not in dealing with the aftermath of mishaps that have already occurred.
In a similar vein, a store cycle counting program is NOT an inventory accuracy program!
A recent trend I’ve noticed among retailers is to mine vast quantities of sales and stock movement data to predict which items in which stores are most likely to have inventory record discrepancies at any given time. Those items and stores are targeted for more frequent counting so as to minimize the duration of the mismatch. Such programs are often described as being “proactive”, but how can that be so if the purpose of the program is still to correct errors in the stock ledger after they have already happened?
Going back to the workplace safety analogy, this is like “proactively” locating an eyewash station near the key cutting kiosk. That way, the key cutter can immediately wash his/her eyes after getting metal shavings in them. Perhaps safety glasses or a protective screen might be a better idea.
Again, what’s needed is prevention – intervening in the processes that cause the inaccurate records in the first place.
Think of the operational processes in a store that adjust the electronic stock ledger on a daily basis:
- Receiving
- POS Scanning
- Returns
- Adjustments for damage, waste, store use, etc.
Two or more of those processes touch every single item in every single store on a fairly frequent basis. To the extent that flaws exist in those processes that result in the wrong items and quantities being recorded in the stock ledger (or even the right items and quantities at the wrong time), then any given item in any given store at any given time can have an inaccurate inventory balance without anyone knowing about it or why until it is discovered long after the fact.
By the same token, fixing defects in a relatively small number of processes can significantly (and permanently) improve inventory accuracy across a wide swath of items.
So how do you find these process defects?
At the outset, it may not be as difficult as you think. In my experience, a 2 hour meeting with anyone who works in Loss Prevention will give you plenty of things to get started on. Whether it’s an onerous and manual receiving process that is prone to error, poor shelf management or lackadaisical behaviour at the checkout, identifying the problems is usually not the hard part – it’s actually making the changes necessary to begin to address them (which could involve system changes, retraining, measurement and monitoring or all of the above).
If your organization actually cares about keeping inventory records accurate (versus fixing them long after they have been allowed to degrade), then there’s nothing stopping you from working on those things immediately, before a single item is ever counted (see the Confucius quote at the top). If not, then I hate to say it but you’re doomed to having inaccurate inventory in perpetuity (or at least until someone at or near the top does start caring).
Tackling some low hanging fruit is one thing, but to attain and sustain high levels of accuracy – day in and day out – over the long term, rooting out and correcting process defects needs to become part of the organization’s cultural DNA. The end goal is one that can never be reached – better every day.
This entails moving to a three pronged approach for managing stock:
- Counting with purpose and following up (Control Group Cycle Counting)
- Keeping the car between the lines on the road (Inspection Counting)
- Keeping track of progress (Measurement Counting)
Control Group Cycle Counting
The purpose of this counting approach is not to correct inventory balances that have become inaccurate. Rather, it’s to detect the process failures that cause discrepancies in the first place.
It works like this:
- Select a sample of items that is representative of the entire store, yet small enough to detail count in a reasonable amount of time (for the sake of argument, let’s say that’s 50 items in a store). This sample is the control group.
- Perform a highly detailed count of the control group items, making sure that every unit of stock has been located. Adjust the inventory balances to set the baseline for the first “perfect” count.
- One week later, count the exact same items in detail all over again. Over such a short duration, the expectation is that the stock ledger should exactly match the number of units counted. If there are any discrepancies, whatever caused the discrepancy must have occurred in the last 7 days.
- Research the transactions that have happened in the last week to find the source of the error. If the discrepancy was 12 units and a goods receipt for a case of 12 was recorded 3 days ago, did something happen in receiving? If the system record shows 6 units but there are 9 on the shelf, was the item scanned once with a quantity override, even though 4 different items may have actually been sold? The point is that you’re asking people about potential errors that have recently happened and will have a better chance of successfully isolating the source of the problem while it’s in everyone’s mind. Not every discrepancy will have an identifiable cause and not every discrepancy with an identifiable cause will have an easy remedy, but one must try.
- Determine the conditions that caused the problem to occur. Chances are, those same conditions could be causing problems on many other items outside the control group.
- Think about how the process could have been done differently so as to have avoided the problem to begin with and trial new procedure(s) for efficiency and effectiveness.
- Roll out new procedures chainwide.
- Repeat steps 3 to 7 forever (changing the control group every so often to make sure you continue to catch new process defects).
Eight simple steps – what could be easier, right?
Yes, this process is somewhat labour intensive.
Yes, this requires some intestinal fortitude.
Yes, this is not easy.
But…
How much time does your sales staff spend running around on scavenger hunts looking for product that “the system says is here”?
How much money and time do you waste on emergency orders and store-to-store transfers because you can’t pick an online order?
How long do you think your customers will be loyal if a competitor consistently has the product they want on the shelf or can ship it to their door in 24 hours?
Inspection Counting
In previous pieces written on this topic, I’ve referred to this as “Process Control Counting” – so coined by Roger Brooks and Larry Wilson in their book Inventory Record Accuracy – which they describe as being “controversial in theory, but effective in practice”.
We’ve found that moniker to be not very descriptive and can be confusing to people who are not well versed in inventory accuracy concepts (i.e. every retailer we’ve encountered in the last 25 years).
The Inspection Counting approach is designed to quickly identify items with obvious large discrepancies and correct them on the spot.
Here’s how it works:
- Start at the beginning of an aisle and inquiry the first item using a handheld scanner that can instantly display the inventory balance.
- Quickly scan the shelf and determine whether or not it appears the system balance is correct.
- If it appears to be correct, move on to the next item. If there appears to be a large discrepancy, do some simple investigation to see if it can be located – if not, then perform a count, adjust the balance and move on.
It may seem like this approach is not very scientific and subject to interpretation and judgment on the part of the person doing the inspection counting. That’s because it is. (That’s the “controversial” part).
But there are clear advantages:
- It is fast – Every item in the store can be inspection counted every few weeks.
- It is efficient – The items that are selected to be counted are items that are obviously way off (which are the ones that are most important to correct).
- It is more proactive – “Hole scans” performed today are quite often major inventory errors that occurred days or weeks ago and were only discovered when the shelf was empty – bad news early is better than bad news late.
No matter how many process defects are found and properly addressed through Control Group Counting, there will always be theft and honest mistakes. Inspection Counting ensures that there is a stopgap to ensure that no inventory record goes unchecked for a long period of time, even when there are thousands of items to cycle through.
As part of an overall program underpinned by Control Group Counting and process defect elimination, the number of counts triggered by an inspection (and the associated time and effort) should decrease over time as fewer defects cause the discrepancies in the first place.
Measurement Counting
The purpose of this counting approach is to use sampling to estimate the accuracy of the population based on the accuracy of a representative group.
It works like this:
- Once a month, select a fresh sample of items that is representative of the entire store, yet small enough to detail count in a reasonable amount of time, similar to how a control group is selected. This sample is the measurement group.
- Perform a highly detailed count of the measurement group items, making sure that every unit of stock has been located.
- Post the results in the store and discuss it in executive meetings every month. Is accuracy trending upward or downward? Do certain stores need some additional temporary support? Have new root causes been identified that need to be addressed?
Whether retailers like it or not, inventory accuracy is a KPI that customers are measuring anecdotally and it’s colouring their viewpoint on their shopping experience. Probably a good idea to actually measure and report on it properly, right?
If you’re doing a good job detecting and eliminating process defects that cause inaccurate inventory and continuously making corrections to erroneous records, then this should be reflected in your measurement counts over time. Who knows? If you can demonstrate a high level of accuracy on a continuously changing representative sample, maybe you can convince the Finance and Loss Prevention folks to do away with annual physical counts altogether.