Seasonal food products can sometimes pose an obstacle for maximizing inventory efficiency, because it can be hard to match market demand with factory production. For example, certain types of soup represent a seasonal business, and these have a shelf life longer than most other food items. To meet high demand in the winter, soup is produced in the summer and fall and stored until an order is placed. This leads to high levels of non-working capital sitting in a warehouse.

To give you a sense of the potential to maximize inventory efficiency, take a look at these numbers from 2 of our manufacturing sites with national distribution:

· 10% of the total SKUs (fancy term for individual products. It stands for stock keeping unit) represent one-third of the warehouse volume, and these turn over every week.

· 30% of the SKUs represent the middle third of warehouse volume, and these turn over every other week.

· 60% of the SKUs represent the last third of volume, and these turn over every 18-24 months.