We've made several improvements in how we handle inventory and orders during the four years I've been here. But now we're ready for additional upgrades.

Like so many other DCs, we are focused on getting orders out same day. In fact, same-day shipment is an imperative at LifeNet since we are one of the largest not-for-profit tissue banks in the U.S. We ship frozen bones, heart valves and veins as well as skin tissue to surgeons around the country.

While our daily order count is low, about 200, they include thousands of individual pieces. To better manage that, we'll be expanding our inventory software to include our chest freezers. It's the same software as manages inventory in our vertical lift modules. For the first time, we will have the same software managing all inventory.

We'll also reassess our processes. No one in the DC has an assigned job. They all perform all of the operations needed to receive, store, pick and ship inventory. So we'll take a look at how things get done.

This is important because people often improve the process without telling anyone. So we need to identify what they've done and update our standard procedures to include these improvements.

In addition, we're looking at RFID. We've progressed from manual data entry to 100% bar codes. Now item level RFID may be the way to track key data for all inventory.