How to: Get ready for spring inventory

Spring will soon be blossoming, sending the frigid winter months back into hibernation for a year. That also means you’ll soon be moving inventory at a rapid pace. Are you ready for the coming months?

Taking steps now to ensure that your inventory and personnel are up to date and ready for the upcoming season will pay dividends when you hit your peak production weeks. But finding new and efficient ways to manage your time and assets isn’t easy.

Here are 10 important tips for simplifing inventory and personnel management:
 

Inventory

Compare what you ordered last year to what you have on order this year. Does the latter make sense in correlation to your needs and current inventory? If not, what changes do you need to make? Keeping detailed records can help.

Verify that what you receive is what you ordered and that the quantity is correct. Check it against the PO, thus updating your inventory with the correct quantities.

Ensure that records are being properly updated as you consume your inventory. This will ensure accuracy of your running inventory.

Schedule and perform cycle counts during the season. This will help eliminate potential surprises due to an erroneous inventory.

Train employees to be diligent in updating your enterprise software system. If things are not kept up to date, inventory will get out of control and your employees won’t trust the system. Then they will start performing tasks without using the software. However, if management is on board and supportive of the software, then the rest of the staff will follow.
 

Personnel

Make sure every employee is set up in your Labor Tracking system. This includes temporary employees, even if they only work for one week. Using temporary staff can boost your productivity during busy months. And seeing the entire labor cost picture is key for any business to succeed.

Set up employees paid on a piece-rate basis at the proper rate prior to the start of the season. This eliminates future issues and hassles later, when you likely have the least amount of time to deal with them.

Use Employee ID numbers to track who worked on which product. This assists with keeping quality standards high and also for incentivizing employees for working above the average piece rate.

Assemble your employees into teams and assign them to a supervisor for accurate labor tracking. Doing so will allow the supervisor to quickly clock the team out of one job and into another.

Know the assigned workload for the week. Reporting on the approximate number of hours to complete the tasks will help you with scheduling. Instead of having every employee come in daily, be aware of your company’s peak hours and days and then schedule accordingly.

Source: Innovative Software Solutions, developer of Picas greenhouse management software. For more information, www.issol.com.