Guarding Your Inventory

It is likely your business had substantial physical inventory? How can you protect those assets?

Locks can keep honest people honest but even a good lock will not stop someone intent of steeling.  If you depend on locks alone you will need great insurance. We had a model home. It was the first home built in the subdivision so there were no homes nearby that were occupied. In the first few weeks we had the front door broken down, the lights on the outside of the house were stolen right off the wall and bushes were pulled out of the ground… and this was in a upscale neighborhood. We were able to install a webcam on a telephone pole across the street and post a sign warning about video surveillance. It either worked or the thieves got everything they wanted because the house was not broken into again.

Not all assets can be protected with locks. On our projects lumber was particularly easy to remove. It had numerous uses and was not job specific. It fit in every pickup truck on the job or that passed by. Even new homeowners that moved into the neighborhood could find uses for the product. We were losing hundreds of dollars of lumber on every house. 

It would have been impossible to lock up construction sites and installing a webcam for every new home would have been cost prohibited. To reduce the thefts we began ordering pre-assembled wall panels and roof trusses that were designed specifically for the job. We scheduled them to arrive the day they were installed so they were immediately built into the house and harder to steel.  It works so well for the lumber that we began ordering all our material just-in-time which means we scheduled it to arrive the day it was to be installed so that it went from the truck to being part of the house the same day. This was particularly effective for items that needed to be installed before the home could be locked up like windows and doors. On materials that took longer than a day to install such as siding we scheduled the delivery to arrive after the garage door was installed so we could lock the materials in the garage while they were being installed.

In the SCUBA shop we were losing small items to theft. Be relocating the small items closer to the cash register and installing a dummy camera we were able to all but eliminate the thefts.

If you look at your normal procedures you may find ways to protect your assets that cost little or nothing.  In the above cases not only did we protect our assets (lumbers, windows and doors) but we discovered by having them delivered just-in-time there was less unintentional damage and we improved cash flow. At the SCUBA shop we discovered that locating the small items by the cash register resulted in more impulse sales.

Identify problem areas then look at your procedures and see if there is a cost effective way to reduce of eliminate the problem.

Original Content copyright 2010 Thomas Robinson

Review Your Cleaning Service

The cleaning service comes at night when no one is around. The bill is paid by your bookkeeper. It is an overhead expense that can slip by without notice.  Take a look at the service in the light of day and see if you are getting what you need at a fair price and minimizing the risk of having workers who you may not even know in your work place.

Do you have a contract? How often is the cleaning being done? Can you get by with once a week instead of three times a week? Does your store need to be cleaned more often in winter? Can employees do some of this work in down times between customers? What is the scope of work; vacuuming, dusting, cleaning desks, annual rug shampoo? Who furnishes the cleaning supplies?

Does your cleaning service clean desks that contain private or proprietary information? We once had a cleaner who hated messy desks. He would straighten desks and neatly stack paperwork often interrupting the work process. He was so intent on straightening desks that we made up a sign that said "Please do not clean desk." An employee who was working on a project and did not want the desk disturbed would leave the sign on his or her desk.

Who cleans the stock or inventory? If you have a retail store even with great turn over the racks and shelves can get dusty. Are your retail employees cleaning these items as they rotate stock? Do they know they are required to do this?

Are supplies, equipment, inventory, cash registers and petty cash secured? What about bank account numbers, credit card numbers? What about files or data? If a computer or storage device is accidentally unplugged while cleaning will critical data be lost? Do you have back up procedures to prevent these loses?

This is a small piece of your corporate puzzle but it is also easy to fix it needed. Take a look at this often invisible service and see if it can better.

Original Content Copyright 2010 Thomas Robinson