OK, I admit it, I am a James Bond fan. You know James Bond, British Secret Service, 007, license to kill, and all that. How much of a fan am I? Well I have all 25 movies on DVD!
Recently it occurred to me that what we need to do in inventory optimization is to follow the example of James Bond.
No, I don’t mean that you should blow up the warehouse or exercise a license to kill (although killing off excess inventory is a good idea).
I mean that we should operate from a clear vision and be adaptable as we progress towards that vision.
Consider the plot a typical James Bond (JB) movie.
A ‘bad guy’ (it always seems to be a guy) plans something that threatens the safety of the world, JB is tasked with finding out who/what/how/when and then stopping it from happening.
The vision and the measure of success are crystal clear.
Along the way, JB’s initial plan doesn’t work out and he needs to go to plan B, plan C, and plan D.
As things crop up he just deals with them until he succeeds.
Let’s translate that into inventory optimization.
Many companies that I encounter don’t really have a clear vision of what they want to achieve.
They start with the idea that they want to ‘optimize inventory’, which is a worthy idea, but they don’t translate that into a clear vision and a clear definition of success.
For example, what does ‘optimize’ really mean?
Is it a specific dollar value reduction?
Is it a specific way of operating and behavior change within the team?
Is it reaching certain benchmarks in stock turn?
Is it all of these?
With no clear vision and definition of success how will you know that you have succeeded (or in a JB movie, saved the world!)?
The second element of JB’s success is the ability to adapt plans as circumstance requires and he discovers more about the dastardly plot.
Inventory optimization success also requires the same flexibility.
Think of this as a willingness to go from Plan 1.0 to version 1.2 to version 1.3 and so on.
This is not flexibility for its own sake but making clear and deliberate tactical changes as you better understand the challenges.
It is not often that Hollywood can teach us much about inventory optimization but James Bond might just be one of a few exceptions. (Don’t get me started on the Jedi approach to calculating stock levels!)
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