Don’t Tell Me How Much Inventory I Have. Tell Me When I Run Out.
Global diesel inventories just hit a 44-year low for this time of year. The number that matters isn’t how much is left – it’s how long it lasts.
September 25, 2026
Global diesel inventories just hit a 44-year low for this time of year. The number that matters isn’t how much is left – it’s how long it lasts.
Bosch just took a €270 million impairment because EV demand didn’t arrive on schedule. The machines still work — what changed were the assumptions underneath them.
American Eagle just discounted excess stock while still not having what shoppers wanted.
Manufacturers hit the same wall with raw materials and components every day.
Why manufacturers need to connect inventory, consumption, and time before a shortage becomes a production problem.
Cost cutting and cost removal are not the same thing. Cutting a supplier price or freezing headcount can lower an expense line without eliminating the operational waste that created it. Real cost reduction starts with Operational Truth: knowing exactly what is happening on the floor, where reality has drifted from plan, and what that drift is costing you before you decide what to cut.
How LANCEWOOD cut its production planning cycle from three to five days to three hours by connecting live Syspro data into the spreadsheet its team already used.
Most operational problems are more complicated than they first appear. Inventory is wrong. A production order is late. A pallet cannot be found. A machine is waiting for material. A customer shipment misses its date. A quality issue appears. The instinct is usually to ask for more data, but after years of working with operating teams, I have found that many complicated problems reduce to five remarkably simple questions. We call them the Big Five of Operational Truth.
Manufacturing technology is having an interesting moment. Artificial intelligence is everywhere. Smart factories are moving from PowerPoint to production. Autonomous trucks are proving that automation’s
When an unplanned disruption shuts down a manufacturing system, the first priority is obvious. During the outage, physical work in the real world continues while system records stay frozen in time, creating a dangerous truth gap between what actually happened on the floor and what the system believes happened.
This article explores why that gap puts inventory counts, production records, quality status, and traceability at risk even after systems come back online. We lay out five critical questions manufacturers must answer before restarting production safely, how to prepare in advance, and how TransLution helps manufacturers close that gap and restore confidence in their operations after any disruption.
Part Four of The Importance of Measuring and Utilizing KPIs in Warehousing.
This article is part three of our six-part KIPs in Warehousing series. Click here to read part one: The Importance of Measuring and Utilizing KPIs in Warehousing: Storage & Inventory.
A messy warehouse is an inefficient warehouse. Further, the longer inventory stays in the warehouse, the more it costs a business. For this reason, tracking storage efficiency and inventory is essential to optimising your warehouse.
This article is part three of our six-part KIPs in Warehousing series. Click here to read part one: The Importance of Measuring and Utilizing KPIs in Warehousing: Put-Away.
Once receiving activity is completed, the accepted merchandise must be stored in a location that is convenient to retrieve for further action. This process is called put-away which can consist of several different types of functions:
Part Two of The Importance of Measuring and Utilizing KPIs in Warehousing.
KPIs, or key performance indicators, are a measure of performance of the business that provide insights and opportunities to improve. They are essentially a “performance scorecard” of benchmarks that are unique to each business, gauging progress towards the company’s goals, identifying areas that need improvement, and comparing performance to competitors and industry standards.
Different warehouses have different KPIs, therefore it is important that warehouse managers and administrators work together to identify areas of importance. Each warehouse KPI analyses a specific process or operation and gives you a result that shows how well that process is doing by comparing it to past numbers and benchmarks.
While all warehouses are different, there are many commonly used KPIs that can be applied to most warehouses. However not all KPIs need to be used to reach your goals. Instead, you should choose the ones that are most relevant to your current goals.
Over the next few weeks we shall be highlighting the Top 25 KPIs in Warehousing and the processes they form part of.
One of the keys to improving operational efficiency is productivity analysis: using data to objectively understand existing operations and finding ways to make improvements.
Managing worker, team and overall productivity in the warehouse and on the factory floor has historically been reliant on subjective observations by supervisors as there was no simple way to track time spent on tasks by individuals and groups. Time keeping systems have offered a partial solution, but they are time-consuming to use, are error prone, and often workers record estimates of time spent on tasks.
Can inventory cycle counts completely replace stock-take in an organization?
Any manufacturer, distributor or warehouse manager is familiar with the concept of physical stock-take. While essential to maintaining inventory accuracy, it can be a disruptive process that causes down-time for business and leaves a lot of room for inaccuracy.
Inventory cycle counts, on the other hand, can complement or replace an annual stock-take exercise while improving day-to-day stock management and accuracy. Any strategy for verification of physical stock must include considerations for internal accounting and audit requirements.
As we find new ways of doing things in the age of digital transformation, moving towards Smart Factories and Warehouses creates new opportunities to improve contactless processing. We are often asked how to take the first step so let’s look at the Internet of Things and some ideas for getting started down the path to a fully automated smart factory.
The Internet of Things is a phrase you’ve probably heard used many times by now. With technology constantly driving changes and growth in industry, it is important to look at these new concepts and how they might be used to improve warehousing and manufacturing.
Around the world, industry is starting to reopen, and businesses are slowly returning to work. While the global consensus seems to be that business should phase in their return, there are no guidelines and each country is taking a different approach.
Accurate, real-time data is the cornerstone of improvement strategies in manufacturing and production.
The importance of accurate data in manufacturing is indisputable. In today’s climate of fierce competition, manufacturers must continually search for ways to improve productivity and customer support. In order to maximize results, companies must utilize their data in a strategic fashion, finding the strengths and weaknesses and looking for ways to improve.
While having accessible manufacturing data is no doubt beneficial, simply capturing data is not enough. Not having said data available and on hand when it is needed significantly reduces its usefulness. Imagine how many times during a day opportunities for improvement might be squandered if decision makers don’t have access to the right information.
The terms stock take and cycle count are often confused and the difference is not well understood. An informative article from www.syspro.com looks at what cycle counts actually are and how they impact your inventory management.
High Quality Organics (HQO) is the leading, trusted provider of wholesale organic ingredients in North America. The Office in the Netherlands serves the European customers with the same excellence.
HQO receives large volumes of product, from over 40 countries, that must comply with strict food safety and tracking standards. TransLution software eases this burden and automates the process of smooth receiving.
Operations within a warehouse are critical to smooth and efficient sales cycles. However, it can be difficult to pinpoint methods for improving operations and productivity.
These 5 tips will help you find the areas that should be focused on for improvement.
