Particularly
in these difficult times, it is staggering that so many companies be they large
or small fail to keep a control of their inventories.
Whilst
Management consistently push for increased sales performance, the question of
housekeeping is often put on the back burner or it would appear totally
neglected.
This
laissez faire attitude is in evidence across the board.
The latest
report from the Ministry of Defence on its inventory controls makes for
sobering reading. With over 710 million items in its stores (ranging from
missiles to uniforms) the inventory is worth £40.3 billion.
The Public
Accounts Committee has now identified £6.6 billion was over ordered or
unused. The MOD is now faced with
disposing of some £3.4 billion of supplies on its disposal website (a military
version of eBay).
The scale
of this ineptitude beggars belief.
As far back
as 2008-9, auditors had raised concerns about inventory accounts and warehouse
systems and checks had been improved, but they had found that the inventory
recorded did not match the stock count at 29% of locations.
This begs
the question: how comfortable are you with your Stock and Debtors controls?
It might be
timely to conduct a pre-emptive review of your operating systems now rather
than wait for the post mortem results.
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