The system says it is there. The floor says it is not.
Stock discrepancies rarely come from theft. They come from a posting that arrives too late, or not at all, and from the six months between two counts in which nobody notices.
The answer is not stricter checking, but counting more often without it hurting.
Sound familiar?
Discrepancies are a symptom. This is usually what sits underneath.
- A posting happens at the end of the day, from memory.
- Material moves from one location to another without being reported.
- Returns come in but are never posted back to stock.
- The annual count shuts down the operation and still does not add up.
- Extra safety stock sits there because the numbers cannot be trusted.
What it costs
What the annual count costs
Employees
Days of counting
Times per year
Hours per day
Per year
192 hours
Calculated with euros per hour, and with the share of the theoretical gain you actually achieve:
- Conservative
- 77 hours3,456 euros per year
- Expected
- 115 hours5,184 euros per year
- Potential
- 154 hours6,912 euros per year
Worked example based onsix employees counting for two days, twice a year, on an eight hour working day. The downtime of the operation during those days is not included here. Not a measurement at a customer. The numbers are adjustable: put your own situation in and the outcome follows along.
Counting until it is no longer an event
A discrepancy you see within a week is a correction. A discrepancy you see after six months is a mystery.
01 / Labeling at the right level
Not per piece if you do not have to. Often a label on the outer box, the pallet or the carrier is enough, and that saves on the number of labels and on work.
02 / A round instead of a count
Someone walks past the racking with a handheld and thousands of tags register themselves. What took a day takes an hour.
03 / See the difference and correct it right away
STOCKflow puts expected next to read. Whatever deviates, you can check while you are still standing there, instead of months later.
The main objection
Common objection
“We already have barcodes, is that not enough?”
For posting one item at a time barcode is fine and often cheaper. The bottleneck is the count: with barcode someone has to get every label in view, so pick up and turn every box. That is where the day you lose sits. RFID reads what is in the cabinet without you having to get to it. Barcode stays where it is good, and our handhelds read both.
What it does and what it does not do
What it does and what it does not do
Wel
- Reading thousands of tags per round, through cardboard and film too
- Expected against read, per item or per location
- Counting weekly or monthly without shutting down the floor
- Seeing which locations deviate structurally
Niet
- Preventing discrepancies that start outside your labeled items
- Determining the contents of a closed box if those contents are not labeled
- Reading reliably through metal and liquids without a matching label type
- Making up for postings in a process where nobody labels anything
RFID takes over the count, not the discipline. If material goes onto the floor without a label, it stays invisible. What you gain is the frequency: a discrepancy from last week can still be traced.
How we prove it: a small, paid Proof of Value
One location or one item group. We count first the way you do it now, then with RFID, and put the two results side by side.
Scope
- One warehouse zone or item group
- Temporary labels at the chosen level
- Baseline measurement: count time and discrepancy found
- A second count with the handheld, in the same zone
Go or no-go
You see in black and white how much faster the count went and how many discrepancies came into view that you would otherwise have missed. If that disappoints, it stops there.
Frequently asked questions
Do we have to label everything per piece?
Usually not. The level at which you label decides the cost and the work: per pallet is cheaper than per box, and per box is cheaper than per piece. Which level is enough follows from the question you want answered.
Can it be connected to our ERP or WMS?
Yes, and in the end that is the intention. Just not as the first step. A connection on a physical process that is not yet right only produces wrong numbers faster.
Does it work with liquids and metal on the shelves?
Those disturb the signal, so there the label type and the placement decide it. On a shelf of cans an ordinary label works badly and a metal tag works. We test that on your products before anything is rolled out.
How often should you count then?
You decide that yourself as soon as counting is cheap. In practice companies go from once a year to a part of the stock every week, so a discrepancy is never older than a week.