You can go ahead and send your wish list to Santa, but you’ll be better off forwarding a copy to the budget writers at your own company.

So what are good little Procurement pros asking for this year?

• Better inventory accuracy
• More inventory turns, and
• Improved accuracy in order fulfillment.

That’s not too much, right?

Well, Santa has the answers.

He’s stuffed your stocking with five ways to help make those wishes come true:

• Take a snapshot. What SKUs were the most popular in the past year? What inventory took the most time to pick up and prepare for movement? Are the high-traffic items in the high-traffic areas? End of year is a great time to run through these questions. As we all know, customer demands and needs change, and something as simple as adjusting the layout can have positive effects throughout the operation.
• Cross-train staffers. Make it one of your New Year’s resolutions. The more versatile your staffers are, the stronger you are when it comes to successfully handling challenges. Remind reluctant staffers that the more they’re capable of doing, the more secure their job will be.
• Get me to the customer on time. Make it your No. 1 priority to improve the on-time rates for fulfilling customer orders. Find out what the elite in your business are doing — and make that your on-time delivery target. You can’t go wrong by making customers happy and confident to do business with your company.
• Upgrade aging technology. If your warehouse management system (WMS) is more than 4 years old, it’s worth checking into available upgrades — or even making the leap to a new system. If the system you implemented 4 years ago has saved your company time and money, it’ll be an easier sell to show execs how much more time and money you can save. Otherwise, it’s a good time to run a price-check on other technologies, such as bar-code scanning or RFID. Prices are dropping as use rises.
• Monitor best practices. Either through Web sites, magazines, trade groups, conferences and other opportunities, check out what the other folks are doing and how they’re doing it. Your peers can often be your best source of information for what’s really working and what isn’t.

Tags: accuracy, inventory, inventory turns, procurement, SKU, technology, WMS