Service
Inventory Management
Almost every operation we walk into believes its inventory records are roughly right. The gap between "roughly right" and actually right is where working capital and customer promises quietly leak away.
In short
Inventory management is the discipline of keeping recorded stock aligned with physical stock, and of holding the right quantity of each item to meet demand without over-investing in working capital. In practice it rests on counting discipline, traceability rules such as FIFO or FEFO, and reconciliation against the system of record.
Perpetual counting, not annual firefighting
A single wall-to-wall count once a year tells you how wrong you were, twelve months too late, and it usually costs you a shutdown to find out. We run perpetual inventory through structured cycle counting — high-value and fast-moving items counted frequently, the long tail on a longer cycle — so variances surface in days rather than quarters and the root cause is still traceable.
Traceability that matches the product
FIFO is the right default for most goods. For anything with an expiry date, FEFO is the only defensible rule, and it has to be enforced at the pick face rather than in a policy document. Where batch or serial traceability is a regulatory requirement, we capture it at receiving and carry it through to dispatch, so a recall query returns an answer instead of a search.
Finding where the shrinkage actually comes from
Shrinkage is rarely one cause. It is some mix of receiving errors, pick errors, damage that never got booked, and genuine loss — and the mix is different in every operation. We separate those buckets through count variance analysis so the corrective action targets the real problem rather than adding a security guard to a receiving-accuracy issue.
Where we apply it
Inventory Management by industry
The same service line looks different depending on what you make and who you ship to.
FAQ
Inventory Management — common questions
What is the difference between FIFO and FEFO?
FIFO — first in, first out — dispatches the oldest received stock first. FEFO — first expired, first out — dispatches the stock closest to its expiry date first, regardless of when it arrived. FEFO is essential for pharmaceuticals, food and any product with a shelf life, because the oldest stock is not always the one expiring soonest.
What is cycle counting and why is it better than an annual stock take?
Cycle counting counts a subset of stock continuously, weighting high-value and fast-moving items toward more frequent counts. It surfaces variances within days while the cause is still traceable, and it avoids the production or dispatch shutdown that a full wall-to-wall count requires.
Do you integrate with our existing ERP or WMS?
Yes. We reconcile to your system of record rather than asking you to adopt ours. Where you have no WMS in place, we can operate on our own tooling and hand you the reporting layer.
What inventory accuracy level is realistic?
Well-run operations with disciplined cycle counting typically sustain inventory record accuracy in the high nineties by location and SKU. The achievable number depends on your SKU count, handling volume and the condition of the opening data — we baseline it during the first counting cycle rather than promising a figure up front.
Also from Drona
Other service lines
Need inventory management you can hold to an SLA?
Tell us your volumes, locations and current pain points — we'll come back with a practical proposal.