Over the last 20+ years in and out of warehouses, it never ceases to amaze and horrify the quality department operations and the waste of resources spent in either making up for failed quality or haphazardly running quality programs, thinking they are a waste of time. Even those companies who focus resources on quality never seem to understand the trifecta of operational integrity (Product in, Quality, Product Ship) that quality could bring to an organization. The reality is simple, quality is either your focus, your company is growing, or quality is a nothing burger, and your company will eventually be purchased or bankrupted. There is no third option; we need to be clear on this point; quality is this important!
In quality and part of many compliance requirements are counting to ensure inventory is correct. The counts break down into three types:
- The Hunt – goes by many names but generally requires a person to count everything in a specific inventory location, e.g., shelf, rack, drawer, bin, etc.
- Cleaning Inventory – is almost always called a cycle count, and its main job is to take the errors found in the hunt and clean them up, resolving specific issues.
- Correcting Inventory – goes by many names but is generally used as a specific action where research is required, combining the hunt and the cleaning to find particular errors, lost product, and specific SKU issues.
If the counts were ordered by a financial institution instead of the quality department, the processes for clearing the errors might differ; the names often vary. Yet the categories are pretty generalized to cross industries and remain applicable to a general discussion on operational improvement and excellence. Specific companies will change names and processes, but I affirm the categories are sufficiently described to be practical and applicable.
Money
A fact of life, inventory is expensive, counting that inventory burns blue money, and those funds are generally not recoupable! When speaking about money, colors of money are critical to a discussion. Unfortunately, too many business leaders are either too concerned with green money or not cognizant sufficiently of the other colors to see how they all play roles on the bottom line’s performance.
- Blue Money: Potential Money. For example, buy a hammer with green money and invest $20.00. But, in the hands of an experienced tradesperson, that hammer is worth thousands of times this amount of money over the life of the hammer. The inverse is also true; in the hands of an inexperienced tradesperson, the potential for loss of money is incalculable!
- Red Money: Specifically, debt where interest is owed, on top of the principal, and other cash outlays.
- Black Money: Dead Money! Dead money cannot earn interest, cannot be spent due to fear, and cannot be used anywhere. For example, drop a $10.00 bill into the sofa, and that money is as dead as yesterday’s fish! Worse, once found that capital is usually in someone else’s hands.
- Green Money: Cash! Plain ol’ greenbacks. Be those digital dollars, actual paper money, change, etc.; this is money that can still be invested, spent, and transferred for products. Generally representing the bottom line.
While other colors exist, the focus is on these four types specifically. Let’s use an analogy here for a moment. A warehouse company hires a person to count inventory (green money outlay). That inventory person invests time to count inventory (blue money) errors in stock could be red, black, green money errors, based upon how the inventory problems are resolved. If no inventory problems exist, only the blue money was spent potentially finding the mistakes. However, if errors were made and inventory errors exist but were not found by the inventory counter, more potential money has been lost than green money. There is a blue, green, red, or black money loss on top of the original investment to have the inventory counted.
There is an axiom pertinent to quality in every industry, “Burn enough blue money, and green money evaporates with no trace.” Hence, if the quality people are burning too much potential money to find defects in inventory, green money (cash) will disappear off the bottom line without anyone ever knowing or tracking the loss. This brings the conversation back to types of counts and the problems in quality operations.
Fundamentals of Reconnaissance
Anyone who has ever conducted reconnaissance will know and understand the connection between quality and inventory in a warehouse and reconnaissance. For those not familiar, here are the fundamentals of reconnaissance. Reconnaissance is all about observations and reporting, communicating and making decisions about intentions, forecasting, and deciphering to make the best decisions while passing relevant information to leaders. Guess what; The same is true of quality departments, especially in warehouse inventory. The seven fundamentals of reconnaissance are:
- Ensure continuous reconnaissance occurs
- Do not keep reconnaissance assets in reserve
- Orient on the reconnaissance objective
- Report information rapidly and accurately
- Retain freedom of maneuver
- Gain and maintain enemy contact
- Develop the situation rapidly
Essentially, in civilian speak, the fundamentals of reconnaissance boil down to initial observation, data collection, data analysis, response to data, and response assessment (evaluate actions with an eye to the improvement of response). Repeating only for emphasis, every employee in a manufacturing or warehouse environment is part of the quality chain of events. They need to know how their actions individually lead to group (business) success. Case in point, a stock person stocks a bin with a product; if that bin is crammed full, the product is going to fall out, become damaged, and create problems for the next person to look at that inventory location. If in a manufacturing environment, if stock feeding machines are not uniformly loaded into the machines, damage, injury, and death potential are maximized.
It is important to remember that this is part of the first step in reconnaissance, observing what is currently happening. Observation is also part of the most basic type of count, the hunt. Knowing what the inventory looks like, how to access that inventory, maneuvering on a production floor, personal safety, and equipment knowledge and safety are all part of properly observing, collecting, and reporting data. A person I know once told me, “Keep throwing spaghetti at the wall until something sticks.” What is not mentioned is the need to prepare the spaghetti so it will stick when thrown. Observation is where preparation occurs, and the business skipping preparation will always fail to capture the data for analysis accurately.
Counting Inventory
The hunt represents the counts with the least return on investment and a need. Hunting inventory errors is akin to hunting game only with a camera. You might get good pictures, but hunting with a camera will not fill your belly if you are hungry. Personally, I despise the hunt and have long advocated for these counts to be removed from the quality department’s count types or be redesigned to become more valuable. Simply counting inventory for the sake of hoping to find an error is anathema to good business sense and propriety.
Remember, a paradox occurs when two items are compared, and at first glance, they are opposites, when in reality, and with consideration, the truth is revealed they are more closely related than they are opposing. The same is true to counts that hunt for inventory defects and proper observation, providing why I despise the hunt counting. Preparation is a prerequisite to revelation, knowing where the inventory is, how to maneuver in a warehouse, and reach the stock; all this and more are essential. Yet, when counting inventory, I affirm there must be a better way than endlessly sending people out to count, hoping to find defects.
Some companies have mixed inventory hunting counts with shelf maintenance and bin cleaning defects. Warehouse rash, trash, litter, dirt, and debris in a warehouse remain a significant safety issue and should be cleaned regularly. However, if the stock person is not already cleaning and stocking bins and shelves properly, the quality assurance person sent out to hunt for defects will become demoralized and stop cleaning up after the stock handlers. Whether those stock handlers are pickers, packers, pullers, stockers, etc., the title is less important than the role they play in quality for handling the inventory, keeping a steady strain on the cleanliness of the shelves, bins, and storage locations, and correctly placing the stock into the inventory locations.
Several colleagues who are part of the quality control group in warehouses express similar sentiments to the following: “My job in quality would be a lot easier if those stocking shelves and those pulling stock to ship would pay more attention to how they handle the stock and the inventory locations.” To which my answer is always the same, “Are all your people aware of the role they play in quality?” By the comments answering my question, it is fundamentally clear that there is a Grand Canyon-like chasm between those not officially in quality and those in other roles, and fixing the problem, and eliminating the useless hunt counts, is all part of bridging this chasm!
Hunt counts do one thing valuably, they provide an innocuous way for quality people to learn the inventory and observe conditions generally, which sounds like two separate actions, but in reality, they are the same action. That’s the entire value in hunt counts; these counts cannot clean inventory defects; they can only take a picture and report that picture to begin another warehouse process. The frequency of errors in the inventory hunt process forms a view that reports how clean or dirty a warehouse’s inventory process is; but, this report can be related with greater accuracy without the hunt counts. Unfortunately, because the data reported is shared in numerical values, individual bias in the statistical reporting tools can be manipulated and often is misrepresented by conscious or unconscious bias.
Hence, we can conclude that the hunt count by itself has little to no value (green money), is expensive (blue money), and will heavily influence the acquisition and maintenance of red, green, and black money. What is a person to do?![[2020's] Top 11 FAR CPA Exam Study Tips - Pass on Your 1st ...](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fcrushthecpaexam.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F03%2FInventory.gif&f=1&nofb=1)
Possible Solutions
Possible solutions are aptly named because no warehouse is exactly the same, no company is exactly the same, and the quality department mission will always differ from one business unit to another and between businesses that compete. I admit I am heavily biased against hunt counts in the warehouse and manufacturing industries. However, I am also heavily biased about removing something that works for something untried in the hopes it will replace a flawed system. Thus, the solutions proposed remain possible solutions to initiate the spark to a future conversation and obtain input from smarter minds.
- Since the hunt counts are basic, and the roles of stockers and pullers are very similar to an initial role in quality where learning and observing inventory is a prerequisite, make the entry-level job for stockers/pullers/quality all the same position—cementing the need for everyone to play an active role in quality while also removing lines that separate.
- Fundamentally change the hunt count to focus not on inventory locations that appear clean but those in chaos. Chaos in an inventory location should be the primary focus for correction, not simply a mindset that everything will eventually be counted, so invest in useless counts to make work. Hence a stocker or puller would approach an inventory location with problems and count that full location while cleaning and straightening that location and reporting that location as problematic for corrective remediation with the last person who visited that inventory location.
- Stocker/pullers will not be able to correct defective inventory; this is a Sarbanes-Oxley headache for compliance, but this is a good thing. A level two quality associate could then be dispatched to that newly cleaned, organized inventory location to perform inventory correcting actions, thus speeding the corrective inventory action and providing better data on associate activities.
- Part of reconnaissance is using data more wisely; this includes capturing data details, improving training, promoting quality as a mindset for every employee, and analyzing the data for specific corrective actions the business can initiate in inventory locations, shapes of packaging, and handling stock more efficiently to prevent damage. Follow the data path to root causes and act on correcting root causes.
Final Thoughts
Qualitative data is almost useless by itself. Quantitative data is practically meaningless by itself. Thus, operational reports must contain both types of data to provide a clear picture of events and be the most useful in improving decision-making. More to the point, mixing both types of data individual bias and subconscious manipulation of the data is more difficult, thus mitigated. Reconnaissance is all about communicating and capturing data for analysis. Why should a business leader only have quantitative data to base decisions upon; hence the need to understand data and use data more wisely. Never settle for only one type of data in a report, never settle for what has always worked in the past, and never allow business processes and procedures to live longer than 18 consecutive months without a full review and torture testing to check for better ways and means. It cannot be emphasized enough, “If you do not try the impossible, you will never achieve the possible.”
© Copyright 2021 – M. Dave Salisbury
The author holds no claims for the art used herein, the pictures were obtained in the public domain, and the intellectual property belongs to those who created the images. Quoted materials remain the property of the original author.
Warehouse or call center, manufacturing or non-profit, service industry or product sales, the role of quality continues to be misunderstood. Sometimes, it appears that quality is intentionally misunderstood. Often it seems as if quality and compliance are synonymous, even though quality is a small part of compliance. Some businesses call quality “Quality Assurance,” “Quality Control,” or the “Quality Department.” Regardless of the name, quality is the only path to improving productivity; however, productivity is measured.
Quality is a process of striving to improve. Interestingly, people inherently know when they have received quality or not. Be it a person, a company, a community, a state, a government, etc., how one approaches quality as a process for improvement defines that person, company, community, state, etc. Some companies think, “We have a quality department, we are meeting quality metrics, we are doing just fine in quality.” To which I reply, in my best imitation of Colonel Potter from M*A*S*H 4077, “HORSE HOCKEY!”
Now, someone might think, these are hypotheticals, not real businesses. Those examples are directly from my experience. Yes, these examples are slightly oversimplified for brevity; however, not having a whole company quality culture hinders productivity. This is a truth inescapable.
Productivity, however measured in your company for goods or services, should be a co-equal part of quality. Yet, if equality cannot be achieved, err on the side of increased quality until productivity catches up. The value of productivity is measured in green money, cash. The value of quality is measured in blue money, potential. Bringing up my favorite axiom, “Burn enough blue money, and cash evaporates, and no one can trace where the cash went!”
Want a secret; it does not work in reverse! Erring on the side of increased productivity increases costs elsewhere, burns potential, and ruins company bottom-lines. Quality cannot “catch up” to productivity — an example best witnessed in manufacturing and warehouses. The potential costs between manufacturing or multiple handling of products carry a potential cost, with no means of recovery. Thus, it remains imperative to understand the roles of productivity and quality defined early, and placed in the proper order, to avoid significant cash hits to the bottom line.
A quality culture is an extension of the individual’s professionalism, always striving to be better. Not faster, not slower, but better every day. Training is a dynamic part of quality, and learning something new should be encouraged. Yet, training, especially in call centers, always seems to take a back seat to operations and productivity. All because productivity is not correctly understood and placed in its proper role. Training and quality are potential or blue money expenses where the return on investment will be unknown. Why; because quality and training place tools into the hands of employees, who then go on to build or destroy based upon the examples of leadership.
Quality should be felt in every conversation, in every process, in every program, in every interaction. As the most important customer in a business is other employees, the quality program is the most important activity and process for enhancing the business’s goals, aspirations, and daily production rates. A culture of quality will then have the ground to grow and room to expand. But, a quality culture will not grow overnight, nor will it grow without causing stagnant processes to change.
Do you understand money? Honestly, is how money is created, used, and tracked understandable or a complete mystery? I have advocated for economics to be taught in high school to understand the actions of government since I was in high school. I was forced to take a class to write checks, balance a checkbook, and other simple economic topics in US Army Basic Training. I thought I knew how money worked after this class, but only later realized I knew enough to get into trouble with money, but not enough to fix the problems I had gotten myself into. I was mid-way through my MBA when I finally took a class on money, economics, and how money works.
Green money is the dollars and cents in a bank account or your pocket and is quickly spent. Green money is often called liquid money or liquid assets, liquid because the holder is presumed the owner, owns it, and can spend it freely any way he wishes. Possession is nine-tenths of the law where liquid assets are concerned. One of the first lessons most of us learned growing up was if you wanted to buy something and your pocket was empty, you went without. Liquid assets are cash, green money and are available to be spent in any way the holder chooses.
Historically, if a debt could not be paid, the debtor’s blood was allowed to be spilled; hence debt is red money. Red money always comes with a penalty called interest. Interest is green money turned red to return the profit to those who lent the initial funds or principle. That debt, be it a loan, a credit card, or another debt model, remains a burden to the borrower, continues to accumulate interest, and can be called due at any moment in time. While some laws protect the borrower from excessive interest rates, it remains essential to know about and be cognizant of the interest rate trap. The legalese on a contract to launch a debt is important to understand, especially where prepayment penalties, late payments, and the ability to call the note due are concerned.
While paying off this loan, you lose your job. You can lose your car because your car is sometimes used as collateral for your payday loan. If the resale value is insufficient, you lose your car, you lost your job, and now you still owe a considerable sum that gains interest. Red money is dangerous; like Damocles’ sword, the danger hangs by a tiny thread above the borrower; one wrong move and the sword falls. Debt, red money can be helpful; but, careful planning and budgeting are required before entering into debt obligations. Always it is better to save and budget green money or obtain investors before contemplating debt.
The next type of money is blue money, also referred to as potential money. Consider a hammer. The hammer might cost $20.00 in green money to buy and bring home. In the hands of a trained construction worker, a $20.00 hammer, over the course of the hammer’s useful working life, has the potential to earn thousands of dollars in green money for the construction worker. In the hands of an inexperienced worker, the hammer has the potential to cost thousands of dollars in green money through waste, destruction, and learning. Training a person to improve their performance might cost $300 in green money; but, if that employee can improve his performance on the job, potentially millions of dollars can come into the company because of the training provided.
Joe’s loan to Jack showed on Joe’s books as red money until the loan and interest were paid. During this time, Joe was also making green money, or profits sufficient to pay his workforce, his other obligations, and still retain adequate to pay himself. Small business owners are not paid until everyone else is paid. It is not uncommon for small business owners to be scraping by on the smallest margins because all their non-liquid assets are locked up in loans to keep the business afloat. When poor business practices begin risking inventory and equipment and shareholder investments are added into the equation, is it any wonder why small businesses struggle.
Money is also created when saved in the various saving tools offered by banks. The diligent saver can save $40 a week until he or she is 65 years of age and potentially have millions in the bank for retirement. Why, because the bank will pay interest to the saver from the interest collected on the loans the bank makes with the green money invested from the savings account. Many different savings tools can be considered non-liquid assets because of the agreements made between the saver and the bank. Generally, the longer the bank’s contract to hold the savings money, the higher the interest rate paid as the bank can schedule payments and loan the same dollars more efficiently when the saver’s funds are expected to be in the bank for a more extended period.
Often Federal treasury departments of governments create money by printing more or larger bills. The problem with printing more money is one of surplus, which begins to increase interest rates and decrease the value of the green money held by citizens participating in the economy. Consider that if the only way to create money is to work money through lending, improving business, etc., and then printing only makes it harder to put money to work. Too much money on the market creates negatives; negatives include lower dollar value, which makes items cost more and increases interest rates, making borrowing costs rise, and inflation begins to increase prices for goods in the economy. More importantly, except for necessities, producers’ willingness to spend money stops; these are typical cause-and-effect actions. A long enough period of decreased desire to spend money and an economic downturn is initiated.
In several different locales, municipal bonds can be held as unseen debt or black money, also referred to as unfunded liabilities, kept on other books, not currently open to the public. The monies owed are not considered red money because there is no plan by those in power to pay these debts; thus, the city’s debt could be significantly higher than reported. Unfunded liabilities never have a plan for repayment by those in power. Unfunded liabilities can be a mixture of many different debts (employee retirement, some municipal bond types, unpaid bills to local service providers, etc.). The common denominator remains, there is no plan or money to repay this debt. Thus, black money is created because there are no plans or money to meet these obligations. The taxpayer remains on the hook for the principal and the interest of those unfunded liabilities. Unfunded liabilities are hopes of current politicians on future prosperity, and sometimes, depending upon laws, unfunded liabilities are part of the government’s credit rating. Low credit ratings by the government increase taxes, the risk increases, making borrowing money more expensive, and the taxpayer generally has no idea how poor their municipal government’s credit rating. Never forget, municipal government, many times includes the local school board.
While this explanation is elementary, the lessons contained are sufficient to protect the bottom-line, improve knowledge, and provide an opportunity for improving circumstances. When bottom lines fail, before anything else, look to lost blue money as the cause. When blue money is disregarded long enough, red money increases exponentially, and green money evaporates; this formula is set in stone. Potential blue money is not elusive, but it takes keen observation to protect and grow. Grow enough blue money, and green money multiplies exponentially.
Fiscal literacy improves freedom and liberty. Fiscal literacy is required to maintain the US Constitution and US Bill of Rights. Budgets are not bad things for government to live on; in fact, the government should be the first exemplar of budgetary soundness and fiscally literate action. A Liberty FIRST Culture will require fiscal sanity and fiscal restraints, a reduction in debt, and a payment plan for all unfunded liabilities.
Company A thinks that games, contests, prizes, swag, and commissions adequately cover their inherent lack of customer service to employees. Company B does not offer its employees any type of added compensation to its employees and treats their employees like cattle in a slaughterhouse yard. Both companies talk an excellent game regarding treating their employees in a manner that promotes healthy exterior customer relations, but there is no substance, no action, no commitment to the employee. Company B has an exceedingly high employee churn rate, and discounts that rate because of employees working from home and not being able to take the loneliness of an office atmosphere. Company A has several large sites and is looking forward to having employees back on the call center campus.
Thus, the attitude towards employee customer service is exposed to sunshine, and regardless of the games, prizes, food, swag, commissions, etc., the employee-customer service fails to keep highly talented employees. This example is not new, and is not a one-off, unfortunately. The example is regular business for employee treatment, and as the trainer stated, there are always more people for positions than positions open, so why should we change operations? Since January Company A has been working unlimited overtime to fill the gap in open positions.
Myron Tribus used a water spigot to help explain the choices of business leaders where employees are concerned. A business is either a money spigot and customers, employees, vendors, stakeholders, do not matter, so long as the money keeps rolling in to pay off the shareholders. Or business is a spigot with a hose on it to direct the efforts of the business through the relationships with employees, customers, vendors, stakeholders, and shareholders, to a productive and community-building long-term goal of improvement. Either a business is a money spigot or a community building operation, the business cannot do both.
Consider Company A for a moment, the time of class overlap was 1-hour. The number of days the overlap was going to affect that employee, 9. Thus, for the cost of nine hours at $17.00 per hour, or $153.00 USD total, an employee was lost. How much blue and green money was lost getting that employee hired, just to see that employee leave within two days of starting? How much more blue and green money will be lost to replace that lost employee?
red green money as a result of their sale; this is why a house, a car, a boat, and other such items are considered assets. The sale of the asset provides the opportunity to turn a non-liquid asset into a liquid asset. However, since many times the asset is employed as collateral for a loan, the sale of that asset means the loan holder is paid first from the sale. If the resale value is insufficient to cover the full loan owed, the loan, which is red money, can still be collected; this process is why red money is so important to understand.
s a burden to the borrower, continues to accumulate interest, and can be called due at any moment in time. While some laws protect the borrower from excessive interest rates, it remains important to know about and be cognizant of the interest rate trap.
In the hands of an inexperienced worker, the hammer has the potential to cost thousands of dollars in green money. Training a person to improve their performance might cost $300 in green money; but, if that employee is able to improve his performance on the job, potentially millions of dollars are able to come into the company because of the training.
Corporate training continues to be a difficult topic to describe, mainly because everyone seems to “know” what training is, but cannot understand what it is not, even when receiving inferior corporate training. As an adult educator, schooled and experienced in corporate training, let’s discuss corporate training, the principles, the need, and the student.
ial for good or ill to the bottom line of an action, process, tool, employee, etc. Green money is cold, hard, cash, and the food of bottom line health. What is the potential of cross-training employees? If done properly, incalculable positive results and consequences are forthcoming. If done incorrectly, immeasurable adverse effects and consequences will abound. Leading to a stunning observation; if enough blue money is burned, green money evaporates, and the business leaders have no idea how or why the bottom line is vanishing, and market share is shrinking. Since training is all about increasing an employee’s potential and runs the risk of the employee leaving the company, the potential costs and benefits remain difficult to quantify in dollars and cents.
often the problem in lost bottom-line or dropping market share is not found in green money costs but in blue money waste. When costs need cutting, always look first for lost potential and save the potential first. If the potential waste is not stopped first, the blue money will continue to burn and will morph into different budget areas because the potential lost is a raging forest fire untended and burning green money.
DNC-Consulting 