There will always be shrinkage of stock as products get damaged or lost. There is also the problem of inventory shrinkage where unexplained differences in physical and theoretical stock appear. Managing warehouse shrinkage is a vital part of cost analysis to maintain margins and control pricing. A good stock control program should be able to track at least some of the losses. particularly in respect of damaged or destroyed stock. Shrinkage due to pilferage or mismanagement of the picking and issue system is harder to pin down.
In PASS Stock we record the incoming goods with internally generated batch numbers so at least when doing stock takes you will know which batches have gone missing and the date they came into stock. We also use batches in the picking system so that when goods go out of the warehouse we know what batches should be in stock and what has been dispatched to the customer. This enables the analysis of the shrinkage to narrow down the problem. Often it will be issue of stock without a corresponding data record but if you do regular checks then the problems will surface and corrective action can take place.
