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Long ago, I was a department manager at Walmart. Keeping the database even within the ballpark of real inventory was a labor-intensive, annoying, never-done tas
by psyc 5y ago
Long ago, I was a department manager at Walmart. Keeping the database even within the ballpark of real inventory was a labor-intensive, annoying, never-done task. My full-time job was struggling to make the point-of-sale replenishment work just tolerably well. It went in waves. Periods where most of the counts seemed pretty good, then periods where it was a mess. After all, it was just me manually locating and counting everything. Too many items with too many places for them to go missing “in the back”.
- tjchear 5y agoWhat do you think are the reasons the actual counts get out of sync with db? I presume it's mostly theft, but are there any other reasons?
- NikolaNovak 5y agoI would venture misplacement is more common than it'd be intuitive to layperson. Whether an individual item that was returned or moved and is on the wrong shelf on wrong bay or underneath the shelf or in some weird corner; up to a whole skid of stuff mislabeled (skid group SKU is not accurate of the individual SKUs inside) or in the wrong place or not accounted for or counted twice. A lot of human error during unloading trucks, scanning, counting, inventorying, etc.
- mumblemumble 5y agoAh, but if you managed it all with a blockchain, it could be cryptographically verifiable human error.
- newsclues 5y agoMistakes or mis-sorted inventory. Customers move stuff too. Busy staff, staff that don’t care or don’t know better. Managed bookstore logistics.
- psyc 5y agoTheft, yes. There are other leaks, such as a lazy or rushed employee discarding broken merch without reporting it. Also, customer satisfaction trumps other policies. That is not just PR. If anything about the POS system annoys a customer for 2 seconds, like a barcode that won’t scan, it got circumvented. And again, the warehouse out back was so huge and chaotic, stuff just got lost, to be discovered months later.
- papito 5y agoSort of like Zero Inbox. You need to fight and win the battles in order to not lose the war - which you will never win but can definitely lose.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]