In January one of the drinks producers whose stock we store and distribute changed its standard case from twelve bottles to ten. It kept the same product code, as manufacturers often do, and had sent a notice in November, with a spreadsheet of new pack sizes, to its account contacts at our company.
The change reached three of our systems at three different times. Purchasing updated its record in December, so replenishment orders went out in cases of ten. The warehouse system was updated in mid February, after a supervisor asked why the pallets looked short, so for six weeks goods in had been receiving every case of ten as twelve. The order portal our client's retailers use, which converts the bottles a retailer asks for into cases to pick, was not updated until April. For three months a retailer ordering a hundred and twenty bottles was sent twelve cases, which by then held a hundred.
The visible results were short deliveries and a stock figure for that client about eleven percent too high. Less visibly, every short delivery was investigated as a picking error at the depot, because the depot was where the problem showed.
When we traced it, the pack size was held in three places by three teams, and each updated its copy when something in its own work stopped making sense. Purchasing found out from an invoice, the warehouse from a pallet, and the portal team from a complaint. The supplier had made one change. We experienced it three times, months apart, and each department believed its own record had been right all along.
Product data now has one owner, the product data team, and pack sizes are maintained only in their system and published to purchasing, the warehouse and the portal from there. A pack change carries the date it takes effect, so stock received under the old size keeps its old quantity until it has been picked. Goods in reads the case quantity from the barcode on the outer case where the supplier provides one, and stops the receipt when it disagrees with our record. Larger clients now send product changes to one address that team reads.
Three suppliers have changed pack sizes since, and none has produced a short delivery.
A fact copied into three systems can change in three different months. The supplier only told us once, and that should have been enough.
– Serguey Shinder
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