How can you manage different product types more efficiently?

Products can also be stored more efficiently using different methods. Using a rack space for a pallet of boxes may be less efficient than a bulk floor storage stacked without racking.

Many retailers try to look at products from internal view of the company. They start prioritising from profitability, sourcing parameters or internal organisation structure view. Instead, companies can benefit more if they start looking at their products from customers point of view. Companies should break their product portfolio into Sub Categories - price points which corresponds to their customer buying journey. Understanding this allows companies to ensure they offer right options to their customers (not too much and not too less).

Managing different products involves several strategies. Firstly, segment and categorize products based on common characteristics. Maintain clear documentation of specifications and standards for each type. Streamline production processes and implement inventory management systems to optimize stock levels. Embrace agile planning for flexibility in scheduling and responding to market changes. Optimize the supply chain and collaborate with partners. Utilize customer feedback and data analysis to guide improvements. Foster a culture of continuous improvement and encourage cross-functional collaboration. These approaches enhance operational efficiency, meet customer demands, and ensure optimal resource allocation across product type’s apply in

When managing inventory with different products and brands from separate providers it is important to always count inventory the same way every time. For example always count left to right and top to bottom. It is also important to rotate your stock, even the non perishable items. Rotating stick is not only a great way to keep perishable item form going bad but it also tells you whether or not the other products are being sold.

Kraljic's matrix is a procurement framework that categorizes products based on two dimensions: supply risk and profit impact. It's divided into four quadrants: strategic, bottleneck, leverage, and non-critical. Strategic items have high risk and impact, bottleneck items are high risk but low impact, leverage items are low risk but high impact, and non-critical items have low risk and impact. This helps in developing appropriate procurement strategies for each category.

Be careful using EOQ as it often ignores the velocity of product usage. If you buy 100 units from your vendor for $1 and you buy 1000 units from the same vendor for $0.95, don't assume your EOQ is the lower cost per unit. This will lead to a misalignment with demand and supply will be unnecessarily high.

This is very true, all of these factors will change and have major impacts on demand and lead times. Allowing for market impact to change quantities stored will help your cash flow.

In retail, you need to be clear about the purpose of each item. A few items (20%) are bestsellers and they should always be available in stock. If these items are not available, it hurts the business. Some items (50%) are option drivers. Customers need to see a good set of options for these. As long as enough options in the customer required category - price band is present, you will make your sale. Finally there are other (30%) which are slow movers and drive up your inventory costs. We should try to get rid of these items (or at least not order any more of it!) What makes things interesting is how dynamic these lists are and how much they change in each location. Automation helps.

I agree but automated systems for reordering and supply can also lead to the products running out or low do to other extenuating circumstances. It is still important to have that human factor. Stream lining is great until the human factor is completely removed.

Automation helps once companies reach a certain size. Many retailers are of such small size that simple 'rules based' or excel is good enough. But if you have - Large scale and complexity - Need real time insights - Have complex demand patterns - High Demand variability - Competitive pressures Chances are that you will benefit from automation. In case you require automation it is important that you get on board a partner who can hand hold you and your team on all the steps that will be required to be done.

As early as possible, get a unique tracking number on a bar code to represent the unit of inventory (each/carton/case/layer/pallet/drum/etc.). Bar codes are the work horse of supply chain and offer inexpensive ways to manage compliance, gain productivity and increase accuracy.

Batch-wise tracking of inventory will be helpful in industries where quality control factors are involved. For products with expiry dates batch-wise tracking will help in prioritizing the sale of products closer to expiration date. Helpful to sort out customer complaints faster. Batch number followed by serial number or barcode and expiry dates linked to PO will be ideal way of tracking

I agree but automated systems for reordering and supply chain can also lead to the products running out or low do to other extenuating circumstances. It is still important to have that human factor. Stream lining is great until the human factor is completely removed.

Integration should be done AFTER you have proven the use case to be beneficial. If you put integration at the beginning of your project, you will delay results and possibly integrate to a process you don't actually use or one that provides no benefit.

When you make an integrated process it is important to make sure that the process can be easily changed or updated do to the efficiency. Quite often companies complete this part of the process and since it works it is left alone without updating the processes.

The best way to avoid having to train your staff is to let your staff train the software. User training, user acceptance and all of the change management efforts are critical if you try to install software that you have to learn and whose data structure and process flow are pre-built. If the staff trains the software, users train themselves and others, acceptance and use is immediate and change management becomes innovation collaboration.

This is one of the most important part of the process. Employee training is the key to make any inventory management system work. Yes, human error can be one of the biggest issues with the process. However, an investment into your staff is an investment into you businesses. When approaching training an employee I do “Show, Do it with them, and them supervise them doing it on their own” with this method I feel as though I am able to make sure each individual that I train is trained the same way on the process. I even use this method when training people to train other people.

Leveraging Inventory Management for building sustainable competitive advantages: Effective inventory management is a cornerstone of sustainable competitive advantages. It empowers businesses to reduce costs, improve cash flow, enhance customer service, adapt to market changes, and build strong relationships with suppliers. Effective inventory management enhances efficiency, customer satisfaction, and financial health, ultimately giving a business a competitive edge in the market.

A warehouse is best when it's empty, and an excellent way to achieve this is through an effective inventory management system. This system should be able to monitor stock levels, predict demand, prevent shortages or excess inventory, and achieve optimal product availability. It should include real-time monitoring, automatic reordering, and accurate record-keeping. Inventory management systems have a Reorder Point System, Materials Requirements Planning, a Two-Bin System (for basic operations), and Just-In-Time.

Don't forget to speak to other stakeholders as well: Sales team are the ones talking to customers; they know first hand what products are in demand and which are inferior in comparison to competition's. Sales funnels might not be accurate, so getting qualitative information like this can pay off too. You can plan proactively rather than reactively relying on past data. The level of trust needs to be high here of course.

Informing your Customers to consumers. Inventory management requires that we inform our customers of the product: its predecessor, futures and development. This type of feedback says as a producer, supplier, sales you have listened to your customer and have done significant changes, developments to products and how the customer will access the products... Happy investory