New Stock Page

We have improved the Stock page in our website. When you search for a product, you can now key in either the product code or its description in the search box and you’ll see a drop-down box listing those SKUs that match what you type, changing with every keystroke. This technique, called intellisense, is that used in Google searches and its inclusion in our site was the brainchild of young Kyle, a rising star in our programming team.

There is a new link in the search box called STOCK which exposes:

1. Chart of stock on hand at month-end in the last 13 months.
2. Your current stock turns.
3. Your current stock on hand.
4. Number of units that have had no movements for a period (obsolete stock).
5. Number of units where the stock on hand is five units or less (tail-ends).

The last two categories are also shown as a percentage of total stock on hand and you can get listings of the units of each category.

Storage is a significant part of your costs and these utilities are intended to help you manage that cost. To keep a unit in a pickable location, i.e. for us to be able to find it quickly when you order it, takes up a lot more space than simply storing it away in a pallet. So, your storage costs can become higher than necessary, simply by leaving tail-ends in pickable locations or by storing obsolete stock. Both could best be sold at a discount.

We hope that you will find these new facilities useful. Please let us know if there are any other metrics that we can include in our site for you.

Phillip Rashleigh

phillip@dsl.co.nz

Web Sales

The Government announced yesterday that web sales of some essential goods, like winter clothing, are now to be allowed. Considering this announcement, several of our retail clients, whose normal business is in lockdown (like ours) are gearing up to launch sales in their websites, some heavily discounted to get badly needed cash flow.

We have decided to partially restart some of our services to do that work. We will have limited number of volunteer staff working in our distribution centres to (1) fulfil web orders sent directly to clients via contactless delivery (couriers); (2) fulfil orders from our wholesaling clients to other companies that operate their own web fulfilment centres; and (3) start work on the backlog of inwards containers awaiting unpack and put-away.

Our staff will be working under systems that comply with the legal requirements for social distancing and workplace hygiene. We will attempt to observe the usual KPIs, but that may not always be possible in this force majeure situation. Our pricing will remain unchanged, unless special requirements for working during weekends and holidays are negotiated in each case.

John Widdows

john@dsl.co.nz