Quality of information is vital

High accuracy from automatic data capture in receiving, shipping, and elsewhere is every bit as important as ensuring quality of products.

By -- Modern Materials Handling, 11/1/2000

When a promised date is missed and you try to find out what went wrong, have you ever heard this answer from the information systems manager: "My system works perfectly; the problem is that the inventory manager doesn't have control of our assets."

So then you go to the inventory manager who blames the inaccuracy on the warehouse. And there the guys say: "How can we provide accurate information when we still have to rely on someone to key enter or verify all the receipts, placements, and shipments manually, on screen, or with a bar code system that is not integrated into the corporate database?"

Those who handle information and those who handle materials (call it inventory) must work more closely together than ever to accomplish the objectives that the customer-driven supply chain requires. The challenge is to improve the level of understanding by both groups.

Information system managers and even their bosses sometimes don't realize how dependent they are on people who receive, store, pick, and ship inventory. And those who must report the information and their bosses don't realize the adverse impact that inaccurate or stale information has on the system.

Here's a case in point: A company in the hobby and craft industry just chucked a multi-million-dollar ERP (enterprise resource planning) system. The reason? After 3 years and a huge investment, there was zero confidence on the part of the salespeople and company management that various facilities could meet the shipping schedule that the system generated. And I hear similar stories over and over again. I'll bet you know some stories, too.

Why was there so little confidence in information at this company? It just kept missing ship dates. The inventory that was supposed to be there simply wasn't. That was because the company did not have a real-time, bar-code-based inventory management system.

Consider that an information system and an inventory system really have a lot in common. Maybe when the people who manage each know how similar the functions are, they can work more closely together. The job of an inventory system is to move, process, store, and deliver items at the same level of quality as when they were first received into the system. Couldn't we say the same is true for the movement of information in an information system?

If your method of handling information mangles what it has captured, tracked, or transferred, isn't that like a conveyor system that keeps mangling the boxes it is supposed to receive and transport? Or isn't it like a trucker who keeps delivering goods "damaged in transit" or, even worse, received with hidden damage?

So what I am saying is that if there is a commitment to the quality of products a company handles, there should be a similar commitment to the information that it handles.