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That warehouse manager at a DC in Atlanta told me why my inventory counts were always off
He said I was checking the wrong shelf location every time, turns out the pickers were putting returns back wherever they fit. Has anyone else dealt with phantom inventory shifts like that?
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james9215d ago
Fixed it by slapping a "returns bin" label on every other shelf and making the pickers sort returns before they went anywhere. Took a weekend to reorganize but after that my counts were actually real again. The manager was pissed at first but then saw the numbers stop flipping around. Sometimes gotta make the process idiot proof even if it looks ugly.
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olivia_webb15d agoOG Member
Did a friend of yours actually try the bin label trick? I heard someone slapping "damaged" stickers on stuff to keep pickers from grabbing it before inspection and it worked for a bit but then the manager caught on.
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jake_walker15d ago
Yeah, that "damaged" sticker trick is one of those things that works for like a week tops. The real fix is what james92 did with the returns bin labels and making pickers sort first. That's actually a smart way to handle it because you're forcing the process to be honest instead of just hiding stuff. The problem with the sticker method is managers aren't dumb, they notice when suddenly half the bins have damage tags on them. And then you've just got a pile of stuff that's actually fine but you flagged it as damaged, which creates its own mess to fix later. Better to just set up a system where counts can't get messed up in the first place, even if it means more work upfront.
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