Let's say you pull up to your favorite fast food establishment and you order a hamburger and fries. The person behind the intercom informs you that they've run out of bread, but they'll gladly replace it with large pickles that look a lot like bread. This is a situation where someone did not calculate their stock properly and failed to reorder on time. What are the chances that you'd come back to that restaurant any time soon?
What you can do is pretty simple. First of all you need to take a specific product that you offer and determine how high in demand it is. You also need to look at the average time it takes for that product to ship. When you figure that out, you'll know the approximate time that it is going to run out. Rather than being blindsided by an empty pallet you can just look at the calendar and see that it's time to reorder product X, and you can get on it immediately.
This is a great solution, though there is also an alternative that you can use. Using warehouse management systems you can monitor your stock easily from a centralized server. As the products are unloaded they would typically be read into the system using some sort of hand held scanner, and this will tell you what you have coming in.
As they leave, the workers will also scan the outgoing boxes that are being packed onto a truck and hauled to the customer. As they scan the product you will know what's going out, and when it gets low you will be able to see. Using certain spreadsheet software you will even be able to code it to flash red when a particular product starts to run out. You can then simply reorder it and that will be that. Just make sure that you don't wait too long to place the order!
It's very important to make sure you keep an eye on your stock. It will ensure the survival of your company and keep you in your house with a roof over your head. There's nothing quite as traumatic in a business as falling behind, and that is why large businesses seem to work their employees so hard, especially on the loading docks. When a store runs out of a product, there's literally a nine out of ten chance a customer is going to request that product. It looks bad on you if you don't have it, so always make sure you have your products in stock! So long as you follow the tips that have been presented in this article you should have no trouble at all.
