Is inventory accuracy a possibility or an oxymoron?

If you can’t find the numbers of parts, finished goods or product your inventory system says you have, you’re undoubtedly wasting time looking for them, holding excess “just in case” inventory (and thus raising your inventory carrying costs), delaying customer orders, wasting time in production and order fulfillment, or generating unnecessary return processing costs.

The main reasons for the difference between what your Warehouse Management System (WMS) system thinks is in your warehouse and what you discover is actually on-hand are unrecorded or inaccurately recorded inventory transactions. A box of inventory placed on the wrong shelf. Forty pounds of steel fittings sent to manufacturing that were actually recorded as four pounds. A size 4 skirt whose packaging is incorrectly labeled as size 6 generates a return because the customer discovered it to be too small. When the product is returned into inventory,...