Nimble Inventory Practices

Transcription

1 Nimble Inventory Practices for Better Inventory Visibility Aaron s Story 1990 started brokering nursery stock while a junior in college to pay for school 1992 started container growing operation 1993 moved into a Volkswagen bus to start 5,000 more containers presented by Aaron Allison CEO Pete Evans Account Manager 1998 started selling grower software for Doane + Slice from Oregon 2000 Some Truths More Truths Truths to live by for any business type A complex process is not sustainable Complexity in process = less profit Truths to live by for grower inventory control Less clicks per item = more accurate availabilities Mobile apps enable your team to drive inventory control from the field Stop bottle necking behind your office team that has to data entry inventory changes If weekly availability is incorrect, order fulfillment will cost a LOT more Many customers come to us claiming they have order fulfillment problems, but they really have availability issues which generate excessive costs If you want better replenishment and lower order fulfillment costs IMPROVE THE ACCURACY OF YOUR WEEKLY AVAIL Managing a growers inventory is like managing shifting sand, it must be a nimble process or you just cannot keep up What is Important? Inventory visibility is critical for sales IE Accurate availability What is ready when? How long has it been ready? Is the grade right for the customer you are shipping it to? Is it a must go item? Is it about to pass it s prime? Creating different availability buckets of inventory for different customer types or specific box store partners It depends what type of product you grow and what type of customer you serve to determine what inventory attributes should be recorded What process is right? How do you decide what inventory process is right for you? How compressed is your shipping or sales season? Depending on how compressed your season is drives what type of inventory control or availability process you should have. The more compressed the more nimble and less steps inventory control should have. Highly compressed seasons that annual and perennial growers have are best suited for a non perpetual process of what we call quick availability This is a build from scratch process that is minimal clicks per item 1

2 Less clicks = happy users Mobile apps make it simple for your team to update inventory but what really matters is less clicks per update Excel interface on desktop Mimic excel and users are happy, less clicks! Making it 2 clicks versus 6 to update an item matters little steps repeated 300 times add up to real labor Making visibility of inventory easy order entry, smart phones; the more you show it, the more your team will use it and keep it clean Start with what you want as a result and work backwards to get there Inventory Control Availability matters most Type of Transactions Counts Dumps Moves Ready Date Change Transplants / Shifts Other attributes Grade Landscape grade Must go Assigning to availability template Availability notes Production notes Selling plants matters most Start with how you want availability to go when deciding how all of your inventory control will go Otherwise you do a lot of inventory control labor you just don t need People get lost in the weeds Those that do not get lost in the weeds, sell more plants with less effort My favorite quote from Ken VanWingerden says it best: The juice is not worth the squeeze Hands down, the quickest way to get accurate weekly availability Got clicks per plant down by 50% More than 2x faster than any other software on the market Scanning barcode option provides even faster inventory avail Availability shows up IN all parts of the system Typically used by large annual or perennial growers serving box stores Basic outline of how it works Pick or scan the location you are in Pick or scan the plant your are looking at Pick or SKIP the flower color which are specific to the inventory item selected Enter EACHES, POST COUNT or use calculator option to quickly calculate a rectangle of inventory 2

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4 When planted or transplanted place it in the forecasted availability week 1215 This would mean it SHOULD be ready to ship week 12 of On week 10, Sync ready week 12 to your device Walk the facility and evaluate week 12 If 200 of the 1000 in stock will not be available until week 13, move 200 of them to week 1315 Constantly keep moving quantities into the true week it will be ready to ship What are the advantages & disadvantages of this type of availability? It is more complicated and takes a higher level team member The pulling team will come in and pull from what looks good, versus what you flagged as best to ship in the system Connecting your virtual crop in the system to the physical crop they should pull can be hard to do, seems simple but it is not. One advantage is you can see when things should have been ready versus when they really became ready to ship I think this is over valued and rarely as useful as people think 4

5 Simple Perpetual Avail Simple Perpetual Avail When planted or transplanted place it in the forecasted availability week 1215 This would mean it SHOULD be ready to ship week 12 of On week 10, Sync ready week 12 to your device Walk the facility and evaluate week 12 If 200 of the 1000 in stock will not be available until week 13, move 200 to ready date: AVAIL Use one ready date to put all available product in, versus a specific ready week What are the advantages & disadvantages of this type of availability? It is simpler on order entry to allocate to just one ready date versus many different weeks You cannot see a difference in older crop versus newly available crop You lose some perspective on when it became ready versus when you forecasted it to be ready Pulling crew does not always pull what you designated as available Availability Buckets Availability Grading Availability buckets are commonly used in combination with different availability processes Create buckets of availability per customer types or specific box store partners Orders only allocate from those availability buckets Grading of inventory to ship certain grades first Some growers like to assign grades to inventory as it becomes retail ready Open orders will allocate to that the top grade first and work through the rest of grades in the order of priority set to them Global availability is split up between these buckets Examples are ready dates named like so: Home Depot HD-1215 prefix of HD can be assigned to bill to or specific ship to s Availability Grading Availability Grading What are the advantages & disadvantages of this? It is a lot of work to grade the product Quick grading screen made easier work of it Order allocation shows these grades on pulling tickets But, pullers pull what looks good anyway Would it be much different than putting all of the grades in a bucket called: Avail? Probably not 5

6 More Ideas Unchain Your Staff Don t bottleneck inventory management with ONE key person Simplify it enough so more people can update it Don t underestimate what your field team can do for inventory when given a simplifying tool Create a gatekeeper for batch posting of inventory changes if needed When your team is chained to a computer in order to constantly update, they are losing the battle Get your team at least visibility of the system in the field, if not updating from the field The more you unchain them, the more they will be able to keep your inventory current and will embrace the system as a tool More of your team using software is more money that software makes you Improve Results Story Sell more plants! Don t forget this is the only real goal Lower cost on order fulfillment. Can t make this clean if inventory is not right A penny more spent on inventory control comes back tenfold You can t improve your availability and raise your sales without better inventory Customers start counting on your availability and order more from it Software for growers Owned by Aaron Allison and Tim Morita In 2000 we thought we d perfect the software in a couple years Quickly realized there s no finish line, but an ongoing process to improve Keys to success for SBI are: work ethic and really understanding the customer s process and problems (easy to say, but you must walk in their shoes, onsite, to do it) About the Company Agile Software 15 years in the business Over 3,000 users nationwide Live 24-hour support, 365 days a year 30 team members, no debt, no investors Dedicated to customer-driven innovation Agile development with versions a year Lets you move fast and see more while making changes [grid view] Helps you work faster with less clicks Differentiates between ready-now and ready-later crops Instantly calculates committed inventory, planning for remaining Nimble, adaptable, and familiar user interface 6

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