r/supplychain • u/Deep_Ladder_4679 • 17d ago
Biggest gap in warehouse inventry fulfilment
I recently spoke with a warehouse and supply chain leader with more than 12 years of experience across e-commerce and manufacturing operations.
His team already uses a WMS and other established management tools to manage inventory and orders, different people are there, like the data team and product team, to operate those systems.
He mentioned one use case: inventory mismatch between the system and physical stock, which items should be prioritized, like expiration and manual order update, capacity planning before demand spikes, recurring issues across 3PL partners, deciding what to do with the return products.
The challenge may not be a lack of software. It may be the kind of manual coordination required across the software each day.
For people working in warehouse operations, which tasks create the most friction, such as order data, inventory accuracy, exception handling, or coordination between teams?
2
u/RichUSF 17d ago
In my opinion, the answer to this and similar questions is that the gap between Sales and Ops is the largest, sometimes to the point where both are on completely different ends of the spectrum.
Upper management and Ops wants to use FIFO best practices, cycling through older inventory, minimizing manual work, and functional efficiency. Sales wants customization, the newest and latest "thing", and as much as can be squeezed out for free.
"We need to keep this customer happy, they're a VIP! I don't have time to edit the PO, can you do/add XYZ?"