The pallet that was not there
The job is on the schedule for tomorrow morning: 10,000 A5 postcards on 350gsm silk board. The press operator goes to the racking at seven and finds half a pallet, because a different job used the rest on Friday and nobody reordered. The merchant can deliver after lunch, maybe. The schedule gets reshuffled before the first coffee.
It is not always a shortage. Sometimes it is the opposite: three part-used pallets of an uncoated stock nobody has quoted in months, taking up rack space and tying up money.
Why stock numbers drift
Printers usually know their stock roughly. The trouble is that 'roughly' is not enough when a job needs a specific number of sheets of a specific grammage and size.
- Stock is counted occasionally, not reduced as each job runs.
- Sheets are not allocated to jobs when the job is scheduled, so two jobs can plan to use the same pallet.
- Spoilage and makeready waste are not recorded, so the numbers are always optimistic.
- Part pallets and offcuts are stored wherever there is room.
- Reordering depends on a person noticing, and on who happens to be in.
The cost of guessing
Shortages cost you schedule changes, rush deliveries, sometimes a substitute stock the customer did not approve, and occasionally a missed delivery date. Overstock costs money and space, and a lot of it ends up as waste when a stock is discontinued. Both come from the same missing piece: a live link between the schedule and the warehouse.
Stock control linked to the schedule
- We set up a stock list by stock type, grammage, sheet size and supplier, including customer-owned stock kept separately.
- When a job is confirmed, the sheets it needs, including your makeready and spoilage allowance, are allocated against stock.
- Projected stock is shown for each item: what you have, less what is allocated, plus what is on order.
- When projected stock drops below your reorder level, a draft purchase order is prepared for the merchant, for someone to approve and send.
- Deliveries are booked in by scanning or picking from the order, and actual usage is recorded when the job runs.
- A periodic count is still done, and the system shows the difference so you can see where sheets go missing.
| Question | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Do we have enough for tomorrow? | Walk to the racking | Projected stock per job |
| Is this pallet already promised? | Nobody knows | Allocations shown |
| When do we reorder? | When someone notices | Draft order at your level |
| Where does stock go? | Unknown | Usage and spoilage by job |
If your MIS already has stock control that nobody uses, we look at configuring it before building anything new.
Running the warehouse with numbers
The scheduler checks stock as part of scheduling, not at seven in the morning. Reorders happen before shortages rather than after them. You can see which stocks move and which sit, and have a sensible conversation with your merchant about what to hold. When a customer asks whether you can do a rush job on a particular board, the answer is on screen.
Estimating benefits too. When an estimator prices a job on a stock you already hold as a part pallet, the system can show it, which helps use up stock that would otherwise sit. And when the merchant announces a price rise, you know exactly how much of each affected stock is on the racking and how much is already promised to jobs.
Signs your paper stock needs control
- Jobs have been rescheduled because stock was short.
- You have paid for urgent merchant deliveries.
- Part pallets sit untouched for months.
- Nobody can say what is allocated to upcoming jobs.
- Stock counts regularly surprise you.