Briefing the count team: roles, count tags and the recount rule

On count morning eight people gather at the warehouse door. One is handing out paper, another asks which zone he is counting, and a third does not know whether to put an opened carton aside as "half". A regular briefing of no more than twenty minutes prevents the most common errors of the day before they happen. This article lays out roles, count tags, two-person counting and the recount rule as an agenda.

Four roles

Separate the roles even in a small team:

• team lead: zone allocation, questions and decisions;
• counter: counts the goods and says the quantity aloud;
• writer: writes the quantity on the count tag and repeats it;
• document keeper: hands out the tags, collects them back and keeps the register.

The warehouse manager does not join the count; he answers questions and watches that the slips are closed. The counter and the writer swap places in each zone. If the same person both counts and writes, he cannot see his own mistakes, which is why a second pair of eyes is indispensable.

The briefing agenda

The briefing should not run over twenty minutes and should follow this order:

1. Purpose and scope: which warehouse, which zones, the cut-off time.
2. Zone map: which pair works where.
3. Unit rules: which item is counted as a roll, carton, pallet or piece, and what the unit on the item card means.
4. Special cases: opened cartons, damaged goods, unlabelled rolls, mixed pallets.
5. Communication: who gets the questions, break and finishing times.

The count tag

A count tag is numbered and carries these fields: tag number, zone, item code, lot or colour, unit, counted quantity, the signatures of the counter and the writer, and the time. The quantity in the records is not printed on the tag; the team counts without knowing the expected figure and does not try to fit the count to a number. The tags are counted before they are handed out, and the fate of each tag is recorded. Use different coloured tags for the count and the check count, so a zone counted twice is visible at the rack. A cancelled tag is crossed out, signed and handed back, never thrown away, because its number must reconcile at the end of the day.

Example: 400 tags were printed. At the end of the day 372 are used, 11 are cancelled and 17 are blank; 372 + 11 + 17 = 400. If the total agrees, no tag has gone missing. If one is short, a zone may have been counted without a tag, or a line may have been forgotten.

Two-person counting and the recount rule

The counter says the figure aloud ("Roma grey, forty-two"), and the writer repeats it and writes it down. Break large quantities into groups: for a stack of cartons, first the number of layers, then the number of cartons in a layer. If counting has to be interrupted, stick tape on the stack and write "stopped here" on the tag. The person who returns counts that stack again from the start; there is no writing "about".

Three rules should be clear in the briefing:

1. No goods enter or leave a zone that has been counted; if a movement is necessary, tell the team lead.
2. An opened, damaged or unlabelled item is marked separately and reported to the lead.
3. If you are not sure, do not guess; mark the tag and call the lead.

A pair that finishes its zone does a check count in another pair's zone. A line that does not agree is recounted the same day, according to a threshold written before the count; the team must know that this threshold exists and what it is.

Example: eight people form four pairs. If you share 12 zones among four pairs, each pair gets 3 zones. When a pair has finished its zones, it does a check count in 3 zones of another pair; so each pair has 6 jobs, 3 counts and 3 checks. That is 4 × 6 = 24 jobs in all: 12 counts and 12 checks. A twenty-minute briefing is about 4 per cent of an 8-hour (480-minute) day (20 ÷ 480). That short time prevents the same question from being asked again and again during the day.

In short

A good briefing does not slow the count; on the contrary, it lowers the number of recounts. On count day StockSystem shares the zones among its teams; when one team finishes a zone, another team does a check count, and lines that do not agree are counted again the same day.