>>>We had one client who pretty creatively fought the system. Reputedly mobbed up. They set up trailers in the parking lot as "slot locations" and parked bogus inventory there. But they got caught.
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>>OTOH that's exactly what I recommended, for a different purpose. They wanted to know the results of classing the eggs, so I told them to invent a virtual location called "classing", move unclassed eggs into it, then move out classed eggs (which were about five different SKUs). The number of eggs should fit, the difference in value should tell whether the quality was above or below average.
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>>The idea didn't quite take, not immediately. It did gloriously, two weeks later, when their boss came to me with that scheme, presenting it as his own idea. I could only congratulate his ingeniousness... because 1) I didn't have to do anything, 2) if I didn't, I'd have to invent something else.
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>That would have been entirely counter to our business purpose, which was to keep exact track of a warehouse inventory -- how much you had and where everything was. You wouldn't believe what a big problem that was in the grocery industry (or maybe you would). The primary benefit of the software was customers had a reduced need for workers in the warehouse (something I was always uncomfortable with). Forklift drivers didn't have to look around for reserve locations when the pick slot needed to be replenished, they had instructions where to go, and were directed to optimal slot locations when new stock came in from the vendors, instead of putting it in the first place that looked handy. I'm not saying they were dummies, because they sure weren't, but a half million square foot warehouse with thousands of SKUs is a more complicated place than you might expect. It was really an ideal use of computers. We sold it for upwards of a million dollars and the customers made that back pretty quickly..

This was actually neat. The classing of eggs was an accounting problem, because unclassed eggs are one SKU, and the A, B, C, dented and punctured were five other SKUs, so transforming one into these five had to be done somewhere. This was a good shorthand technique to do this in a virtual location (and probably a physical one as well, even though it wasn't really physically separate from the rest).

As for replacing workers, we had the opposite experience. The system of retail tax then (1990-1992) had about 40 categories of goods, with as many percentages of retail tax (actually, up to thrice as many, as there may have been any combination of federal, state and province tax, plus excise for tobacco and alcohol), and some of the retailers would have to engage two guys for about a week every month to just total it appropriately and correctly so they'd know how much to pay. Once they saw that they're getting correctly classed tax sheets within seconds (OK, with the then matrix printers, minutes), only then they dared open four more warehouses in other places. When the power goes out, the business stops - not a single bottle of mineral water goes out without being registered in the database.

I only wish we made a comparable amount of money :).