Rant: Our inventory system went from smooth to trash in 3 months flat

Back in June we switched to a new warehouse management vendor because the old one kept crashing. The first month was fine, order accuracy held at 98%. Then around month two things started slipping. Pick errors jumped to 15% and we found 40 boxes of the wrong product shipped to a client in Phoenix. I traced it back to how the system flags location changes. It doesn't flag them at all unless you manually check. The vendor told us to just run daily audits but that eats 2 hours of labor per shift. We are losing about $600 a week on return shipping and restocking fees. Has anyone else had a vendor sell them on features that only worked in their demo video?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_dakota4d ago

That part about features that only worked in the demo video really hit home. We had a similar situation with a picking system that showed perfect scanning accuracy during the trial, but in real life it couldn't handle our high volume of mixed pallets. The daily audits thing is exactly the kind of extra labor they don't tell you about upfront, and it adds up fast when you're already stretched thin. Sorry you're dealing with that Phoenix mess, it's always the big screwups that get remembered.

the_ruby4d agoMost Upvoted

Best thing we did was run the demo on our actual floor with our actual mix before signing anything. If they push back on that, it's a red flag. Also make sure you have a termination clause that lets you walk away clean if the system can't handle production volume after go-live.