Got hoarders and squirrels? How to overcome hidden stock rooms.

If you spend any amount of time opening cabinets, drawers, toolboxes and looking behind locked doors in your facilities, I almost guaranteed that you will come across someone’s stash of parts, new & used. When you first begin a maintenance best practices or storeroom improvement program, one of the first things you’ll want to do is to go and collect up all of parts and materials that are squirreled away and return them the storeroom.  After all, there is a lot of money just laying around out there in those “hidden” stock rooms, right?

Well, before you go right to this step, you may want to stop and think on why the hidden storeroom(s) exists in the first place.

One reason that is always present with maintenance people is the thought process that says, “If I’m ordering one, then I better order two or three just in case one doesn’t work. After all, we don’t stock them, so if we needed it once, I’m sure we will need it again”.  The downside to this thought process is that you can’t afford to stock a complete factory on the side, not to mention that it’s money spent that may never be used or used for 10 years.

In many cases, they “squirrel away or hoard” these items because they don’t trust the storeroom or the entire inventory management process.  The stashes are “workarounds” for a perceived broken process so you must identify why your maintenance folks have that perception.  Once you have a clear understanding of their viewpoint, take your findings to the storeroom to determine if there are issues that should be addressed.  I’ve found that in most cases, all that is wrong is the lack of understanding the other departments’ processes.

This misunderstanding could be as simple as your maintenance staff can’t find the parts in the storeroom because the descriptions to look up parts are not accurate.  It could also be as simple the storeroom was provided the Preventative Maintenance (PM) schedules for the equipment and therefore didn’t realize how much to stock and when to have it in stock.

These are just a couple of examples that I’ve experienced.  Once the communication starts, many more issues/concerns can be revealed and that is a good thing.  You have to fix the system and the processes to eliminate the “hoarding” and those hidden stores. Once demonstrated and having earned the trust of the users, you can then be successful in collecting up the “hidden stores”.

What about your site? Do you have hidden stores? What are some of the reasons that your “hoarders” exist? What have you done to fix the issues?

About Joe Crews & JIT Solutions Group, LLC

 

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As an Inventory Consultant, my job is to education businesses on how to manage & maintain an accurate inventory but also a cost effective inventory.

 

I do this by analyzing 4 areas of their company: People, Processes, Procedures and Technology. Once this assessment is completed, I’ll implement the changes that are necessary to make them more Organized, Productive and Profitable.

 

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For more information on my services, please visit my website, www.jitsolutionsgroup.com or visit my LinkedIn profile: www.linkedin.com/in/inventoryjoe/.

 

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