Inventory rotation and inventory warehousing

When Inventory or stock is held in a warehouse for any period of time it is important to have a correct way of tracking this inventory throughout the warehouse, supply chain, and when it gets shipped to customers. This becomes an important issue when the value to weight ratio of the products is quite high and/or when the products are perishable.

Correct stock/inventory rotation is important with perishable products such as groceries, food items, and some chemicals. The stock rotation system should be easy to understand and operate. It should form part of any lean and efficient organization. A few examples of warehouse stock rotation systems are:

-Two bay stock rotation system, one bay is filled at a time and the other bay can supply the system. This is very similar to the two-bin system

-Barcode and date of manufacture supermarket system, which can track stock effectively through the warehouse. Operators can find the most appropriate stock to ship or use.

–FIFO Rotation inventory stock system

With any stock/inventory management system there are risks that the production schedule may not coincide with customer requirements; over produce products (specially slow moving or perishable products), or have excessive downtime which will affect inventory levels in the warehouse. Nothing is better than good communication between the production and warehouse/distribution departments to balance customer demands, sales forecasts, and warehouse stock levels.