Counting becomes a walk around. No more day of downtime.
The annual or quarterly count shuts the operation down, takes a day or more with a lot of people, and then produces a list of differences nobody can explain because they appeared months ago. The problem is not the count. It is that so little counting happens that every difference becomes unexplainable.
We first measure how many hours your current count takes and how big the correction afterwards is.
Sound familiar?
With counting, the pain is rarely the counting itself. It is everything around it.
- The quarterly count shuts the warehouse down and still does not match.
- Counting happens on weekends or after hours, at premium rates.
- Differences cannot be explained because they are months old.
- Counting in between does not happen, because the operation cannot stop.
- After the count comes a correction posting nobody really trusts.
What it costs
What a count costs per year
Counts per year
People
Hours per count
Per year
288 hours
Calculated with euros per hour, and with the share of the theoretical gain you actually achieve:
- Conservative
- 115 hours5,184 euros per year
- Expected
- 173 hours7,776 euros per year
- Potential
- 230 hours10,368 euros per year
Worked example based onfour counts a year with eight people spending nine hours on it. Only the counting hours, without the downtime of the operation and without the sorting out afterwards. Not a measurement at a customer. The numbers are adjustable: put your own situation in and the outcome follows along.
How counting becomes a routine
The gain is not in counting faster but in counting more often. A difference of one week can be explained, a difference of one quarter cannot.
01 / Everything that counts carries a tag
Every item or carrier that goes into the count gets a label. What has no label does not count, and that is the honest limit of this solution, stated up front.
02 / Walking instead of scanning
Someone walks along the racking with a handheld. Nothing is picked up, nothing turned and nothing ticked off; the reader reads what is within range, through boxes as well.
03 / The difference on the same day
The count immediately produces a list of discrepancies against the records. Because you count more often, every difference is small and fresh enough to trace back to where it came from.
What RFID does and does not do when counting
What RFID does and does not do when counting
Wel
- Register hundreds to thousands of items per round, through cardboard and film as well
- Count during the work, without shutting the operation down
- Produce a list of differences against the records right away
- Make counting more often possible, so differences stay small and explainable
Niet
- Count items that carry no tag
- Read through steel racking or a pallet of metal sheets without adjustment
- Read a pallet standing behind a wall of other pallets
- Replace the manual check entirely: spot checks are still needed
Readability is the deciding factor here, and it differs per racking type, per packaging and per material. That is why in the Proof of Value we measure not only the time saved but also the read rate: which part of what is there is actually seen. Without that figure, a count with RFID is an assumption and not a count.
What changes in practice
Scanning once a week
Instead of keeping up with stock movements every day. One round along the racking replaces a week of separate postings, and what you scan is what is there.Five to ten minutes per round
Instead of two hours a day entering stock movements. The time goes into the walking and not into the registration, and that is a tenth of the work.A reorder suggestion that speaks up
When an item drops below its reorder point, the suggestion is there. Nobody has to go through a list to see what is nearly out.Finding one product when you have to
With a best before date coming up or a recall, you do not search the whole inventory but one batch, and you know where it is. That is not time saved but a risk you cover.
What this looks like in your operation
The same solution lands differently on a production floor than in a warehouse. Pick your own situation and you will see what changes for you, and what a Proof of Value measures there.
Logistics, warehousing & distribution
Receive, count and ship goods with fewer manual scans and fewer errors. Prove it first on one inbound or outbound process.
Manufacturing & material flow
Less searching for material, less manual posting and stock that adds up. Start with a small, paid Proof of Value on one material flow.
How we prove it: a small, paid Proof of Value
We count one zone the old way and then with a handheld. Two measurements side by side: time, and which part of the stock was seen.
Scope
- One warehouse zone or item group
- Temporary labels on everything standing in that zone
- One handheld reader and a limited group of users
- Baseline measurement: the same zone counted by hand, with the time recorded
- Read rate per racking type is recorded separately
Go or no-go
After the test you know how much time a round takes against the manual count, and which part of the stock is read reliably. If that percentage stays too low, it goes in the report and you decide on that basis. That is not a setback we paper over; it is the reason to measure.
What you are probably thinking
We only count once a year, so this does not pay off.
Then the question is not what the count costs but what a year without counting costs. Differences that only show up after twelve months cannot be traced and get written off. What that produces in wrong picks and emergency orders is recorded nowhere as counting cost and is usually the larger amount.
How do we know for sure that the reader saw everything?
You know by measuring it, and that is exactly what we do in the Proof of Value. The same zone is counted by hand and read with the handheld; the difference is the read rate. If we do not reach a usable percentage on your racking, that is the outcome.
Our accountant requires a physical count.
An RFID count is a physical count: what is there is genuinely observed, only without touching it. What accountants usually want to see is an auditable method with spot checks alongside it, and those spot checks stay. This is a conversation you have up front, not afterwards.