Cleaning Out the Fridge

Whenever we clean out the refrigerator at our house, I get the ikky job of disposing of the leftovers. The last time that we did it, the parallel between our refrigerator and many of the warehouses that I’ve been in recently was just close to ignore.

I almost always find something that I’ve been looking for, or have just bought another one, hiding behind something that we never move. How often are the products that we backorder actually in the warehouse, somewhere, but obscured by slow moving, or dead stock?

There are little bits and pieces of things like  a quarter of a lemon or a morsel of French cheese. We were confident that there would be a pressing need for them when we carefully re-wrapped them and tucked them in the corner. When a product has run through its life cycle and we have a few pieces left, do we hang on to them forever, remembering how sought after they once were, rather than writing them off to make room for fresh merchandise?

I’m forever reaching deep on a shelf for something common when I realize that G.E. carefully planned the refrigerator door as a convenient place for the most frequently used products. This is a slotting problem! Do you save a little space in the golden zone so that there is always a place there for the new fast movers?

As I wash a half-quart of old yogurt down the drain, I wonder if we could have bought only the pint required for the recipe. We probably saved a lot by buying the quart. Exuberant buying because the price is low, or because the terms are good often costs us more in inventory carrying cost and potential obsolescence than the expected savings. But, the purchasing agent is seldom responsible for throwing it away.

There are always some leftovers from a meal that was truly delicious last week. We were hoping to re-create the experience in a small way, but had moved on to a new cuisine. Actually, many of the most flavorful meals that my wife prepares are created from leftovers, so I don’t begrudge the occasional one that slips through. How creatively and aggressively do we try to move excess inventory out of the warehouse? Its value drops every day, so the faster that we recognize it as excess, the better the chance of getting some real value out of it. It will never be ordered through our regular sales channels, so we must be pro-active with return to vendor programs, secondary marketing channels, employee sales or perhaps charitable contributions.

We have a second refrigerator in the pantry. 
It’s sort of like the other end of the warehouse, or off-site leased space. But, there are frequently used items there, like wine, beer and soft drinks. We don’t seem to need to clean out this fridge as often as the one in the kitchen. The products appear to have a faster turn rate. I think that the reason that it works so well is that these items are not often included in a recipe with ingredients from the other refrigerator. It’s sort of a warehouse within a warehouse, with its own products and its own customers.

If only we could clean out and manage our warehouses as ruthlessly as my wife cleans out and manages our refrigerators, I believe that the removal of all the clutter would make life a lot easier, and more productive, too.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James M. Apple, Jr. is a Director in The Progress Group. Prior to co-founding The Progress Group in 1991, he was a Partner with Coopers & Lybrand's SysteCon division. During 1992-1995 he served as a Senior Systems Advisor with Vanderlande Industries, a major conveyor and systems provider in Europe.

Jim is an internationally recognized thought leader in the area of facility design and integrated distribution systems. His contributions to the improvement of distribution practices have been recognized by his receipt of the prestigious Reed-Apple Award, which is given for lifetime contributions to the advancement of the material handling profession. Jim has also received the Institute of Industrial Engineers' Facilities Planning and Design Award. He has written numerous articles and handbook chapters on warehousing and logistics operations and is a popular speaker on logistics seminar and conference programs.

Prior to SysteCon, Jim worked as an Industrial Engineer with IBM, was Supervisor of Facilities Planning for the Oldsmobile Division of General Motors and was Executive Vice President for an automotive aftermarket parts supplier. He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.