Competing March 2005 Edition

8.5 ways to improve inventory accuracy

1 – 5S – sort, straighten, shine, standardize and sustain your inventory

• Classify and sort inventoried goods according to their turnover (Pareto or ABC analysis).

• Get rid of all the obsoletes. Sell them, give them away or throw them away! Why wait?

• Create a routine so that poor (dirty and untidiness) conditions are not tolerated.

2 – Create your own way of measuring inventory accuracy.

3 – Implement a way so that cycle counting (daily, no more than one man-hour) tells you the current inventory accuracy.

4 – Constantly measure and post inventory accuracy

5 – Meet daily with inventory accuracy champions (15 minutes) to talk about the root cause of inventory inaccuracy (like incorrect Bills Of Materials, lack of discipline while closing shop orders, inaccuracy in the receiving area, etc). It is not okay to have inaccurate inventories; you must do something about it!

6 – Continually identify root cause and use the kaizen process to implement and measure progress.

7 – Continually sell the value of the process to key employees (your “list”). Show the importance of an accurate stock (factory stopping, sudden changes, poor customer service,…)

8 – Give visible recognition when something has been fixed

8.5 – Keep on improving (move to bar-coding if possible, Automate as many steps as possible in the information flow).

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