The short answer
Consumable usage tracks how many people use a building, not how big it is. Ordering per square metre produces systematic over-supply in quiet buildings and shortages in busy ones.
Issue records against site already tell you the real pattern. Most contractors hold that data and order from memory anyway.
What drives usage
- Occupancy, which is the dominant factor
- Site type, since a food site and an office differ enormously
- Day of week, with hybrid working making midweek peaks sharper
- Season, for hand hygiene and for entrance matting
- Dispenser type, which changes consumption per use
- Whether the public has access
Hybrid working has made the midweek pattern much more pronounced in offices, and ordering built on pre-pandemic assumptions is frequently still in place.
Where the money leaks
| Problem | Cost |
|---|---|
| Emergency purchases locally | Retail price, plus the trip |
| Overstock at site | Cash tied up, and it goes missing |
| Wrong product ordered | Returns or write-off |
| Stockout of a basic item | Client complaint, sometimes contractual |
| Bulk discount missed | Ordering too often, too small |
Emergency purchases are the visible cost and usually not the largest. Stock sitting in site cupboards is capital, and in many operations nobody counts it.
Forecast per site, order centrally
- Build usage history per site from issue records.
- Adjust for known changes in occupancy or scope.
- Forecast per site for the ordering period.
- Aggregate for purchasing, so you get volume pricing.
- Distribute on a schedule rather than on request.
Aggregating for purchase while forecasting per site is the combination that gets both accuracy and price. Most operations do one or the other.
Watch for the signals
A site whose usage suddenly changes is telling you something: occupancy changed, a dispenser is broken and wasting product, or stock is going missing.
Flagging unusual movement per site turns the forecast into an operational control as well as a purchasing tool, and that is frequently where the larger saving is.