Ted was excited (and nervous) to in charge of the annual physical inventory count with Visual ERP. He got all organized and decided to use Visual Enterprise Physical Inventory Module. After some careful consideration: blank tags versus tags with part ID’s, he decided on the latter. He created the count for all parts that had on hand quantities in Visual Enterprise. He made sure he locked the warehouse locations and then printed off the tag lists.
Ted handed the first list to Team #1 – Charlie and Jack. Off they went. Within 15 minutes they were back to Ted and they weren’t happy. Jack yelled “Ted!!! What are you doing to us? We have been around the plant 3 times and we haven’t made it past the first 5 parts.” Charlie piped in “Plus you have us counting clamps and screws. We’re plastic guys. We don’t know anything about metal parts. What were you thinking?”
Ted sheepishly looked at the list and they were right. The part ID’s were all in Part ID sequence. “Oh no. With only 1 warehouse & location, there is no grouping by the type of inventory” Ted realized but didn’t have the nerve to say out loud.
Ted gravelled “Sorry guys, this is what we have to deal with. Just do your best. Thanks.” Jack acquiesced “Sure Ted, but we’re not going to like it. Going to take us 5 times as long.” Charlie chuckled “At least we’ll get our exercise in today walking around the plant”.
A couple of hours later, Charlie & Jack handed in their sheets. Susie entered the counts into the system. Then Ted ran a count comparison from Visual Enterprise looking for any items over 5% different than the current on hand quantities. “Yikes” Ted exclaimed. “This shows a $10,000 pick-up on one part. That can’t be right.” Ted printed the tag list for recounts and grabbed the recount team. “Pat & Chris can you go out and check these clamps? Ted & Charlie counted 528 of them but Visual Enterprise says we have a lot less. Something’s up.”
A few minutes later, Pat & Chris returned. Mystery solved. Pat joked “They were right. Sorta. There are 528 clamps but the stock unit of measure in Visual ERP is dozen. See it even shows on the count sheet”. Chris calculated quickly in his head. “So that is 44 dozen.” Such a show off, Ted thought. “So we only lost 1 dozen” Ted sighed with relief.
Ted exclaimed. “Thanks guys, really appreciate you figuring this out. I will go into Visual and enter the recount.”
This was Ted’s day, back and forth with the teams. Even the pizza lunch didn’t help much. By the end of the weekend, Ted cried out in exasperation “There has got to be a better way! We are not going through this next year.”
To find out Ted’s plans for next year and make your physical inventory easier click on this LINK.
